The terracotta sculptures of Nigeria's Nok culture were being made centuries before China's Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.
The events
- Nok culturec. 1000 BC · Nok. The Nok culture emerged in what is now Nigeria, renowned for its expressive terracotta sculptures. Its people were among the first in West Africa to smelt iron.
- Terracotta Army210 BC · Mount Li. Qin Shi Huang died in 210 BC and was buried in a vast mausoleum at Mount Li. It is guarded by thousands of life-size clay warriors with horses and chariots, discovered by farmers in 1974.
10th century BC · 3rd century BC
More amazing facts
- 1274 BC · 1945 Fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh, Egypt and the Hittites signed one of the oldest known peace treaties.
- 1200 BC · 1936 The thylacine vanished from mainland Australia about 3,200 years ago, yet survived in Tasmania into the 20th century: the last one died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.
- 1050 BC · 863 Cyrillic is a distant descendant of the Phoenician alphabet: Phoenician gave rise to Greek, and Greek to the letters created almost 2,000 years later.
- 880 BC · 814 BC Around 880 BC, Lapita seafarers landed on Tonga — at nearly the same time the Phoenicians founded Carthage.
- 776 BC · 753 BC The Olympic Games are older than Rome: the first were held in 776 BC, and by tradition the city was founded only 23 years later.
- 650 BC · 612 BC The fire that destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC baked the clay tablets of Ashurbanipal's library — helping them survive to the present day.