Marked Igbo-Ukwu, Anambra

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Igbo-Ukwu

In 1938 a man digging a well in south-east Nigeria found bronzes cast in astonishing detail. Excavations showed a burial of an important person with more than 160,000 glass beads, some from as far as Egypt and India.

Place
Igbo-Ukwu, AnambraAfrica
Laid out as
A siteOne place known mainly from digging, read layer by layer from the top down.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IA well and a find
  2. IIThurstan Shaw’s digs
  3. IIIBronzes like no others
  4. IVBeads from far away
  5. VA priest-king?
  6. VIIgbo-Ukwu and today’s Igbo

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Isaiah Anozie
  • Thurstan Shaw

Objects

  • The roped pot on a stand
  • Bronze shell
  • Glass beads

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 850 to 1000. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?