Igbo-Ukwu: The African Bronzes Older Than Europe's

In 1938, a Nigerian villager named Isaiah Anozie was digging a cistern in his back garden when his shovel struck a bronze vessel a thousand years older than he was. The lost-wax bronzes of Igbo-Ukwu — cast with raised insects, dragonflies, and free-standing chains — rewrote what European scholars had believed possible in the rainforests of West Africa. A calm, beautifully narrated story for sleep, deep focus, or quiet evenings. No cliffhangers. No clickbait. Just history, slowly told. — Chapters — 00:00 Opening 01:00 Isaiah Anozie's cistern 02:30 The forest country east of the Niger 04:00 Thurstan Shaw arrives 05:30 The technical problem of the date 07:00 The lost-wax casting 08:30 65,000 trans-Saharan beads 10:00 The man at Igbo Richard 11:30 What changed about West Africa 12:30 The wider implication — Sources — • Thurstan Shaw, Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria (Faber, 1970) • Thurstan Shaw, Unearthing Igbo-Ukwu (Oxford UP, 1977) • Frank Willett, African Art (Thames & Hudson, 3rd ed., 2002) • Bassey W. Andah, Nigeria's Indigenous Technology (Ibadan UP, 1992) • Suzanne Preston Blier, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba (Cambridge UP, 2015) — About this channel — Long, calm, beautifully narrated stories from the ancient world. New stories every few days. Subscribe and sleep well. #sleephistory #ancienthistory #historyforsleep #bedtimestories