How iron metallurgy began in west africa?

Question

How iron metallurgy began in west africa?

Answer 1

Is a much wrangled over subject. There's a Unesco book called 'Iron roads in of Africa', but the the dates are very hard to verify as the Africans had a habit of using ancient charcoal to smelt the iron ore, and this makes C14 dating a bit unreliable. The Nok people of Nigeria are credited with being the first Africans to work iron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nok

http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.p...