✳ 54 COUNTRIES / ONE STORY / SEED 808958

FIRE IN THE
TERRACES.

SUKUR · MANDARA MOUNTAINS · NIGERIA

A landscape shaped by stone, cultivated hillsides, and iron. Explore an interpretive reconstruction of Sukur’s distinctive terrace-embedded smelting technology.

01 / THE FURNACE

SMELTING LAB

IDLE

Explore a simplified working model of charge, airflow and bloom formation. This is not a calibrated metallurgical simulation.

01 CHARGE02 FIRE03 BLOOM

INTERPRETIVE HEAT LEVELAMBIENT

BELLOWS / AIRFLOW65%

02 / ARCHITECTURAL LAYERS

SECTION VIEWReveal chamber and tuyere

FIELD ANNOTATIONSIdentify landscape features

03 / NATURAL LIGHT

DAYLIGHT16:30

06:00 / DAWN20:00 / DUSK

FIELD NOTE / 01

A furnace in the hillside

The Sukur smelting furnace was embedded into a cultivation terrace, with its bellows operated from the higher platform behind the shaft.

DOCUMENTED PRINCIPLE

HISTORY &
INTERPRETATION

An homage to a living cultural landscape, not a measured survey or a claim to reconstruct one particular extant furnace.

DOCUMENTED

Sukur occupies a hilltop landscape in Adamawa State, Nigeria. Granite terraces and paved walkways, round mud-walled and thatched dwellings, dry-stone enclosures and historic iron-smelting installations are attested by UNESCO and Nigeria’s heritage commission.

Sukur furnaces were built into agricultural terraces. A high-level bellows assembly sent air through a descending ceramic tuyere to the lower shaft, while ore and charcoal were charged from above. Iron blooms were removed through a lower opening.

INTERPRETED FOR THIS SCENE

The exact positions, dimensions, footprints, decorations, vegetation and colors in this fictional composite workshop are artistic decisions. Bellows mechanics, temperature bar, charge particles and bloom animation are educational visualizations rather than quantified physical or archaeological models.

HISTORICAL PERIOD

Late nineteenth century, during a phase when iron production was an established activity at Sukur; the tradition subsequently declined and ceased by the early 1960s.

PRIMARY REFERENCES

UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Sukur Cultural Landscape ↗

National Commission for Museums and Monuments ↗

Sukur Cultural Landscape research — Furnaces ↗

NO EXTERNAL 3D ASSETS • PROCEDURALLY GENERATED GEOMETRY & TEXTURES • THREE.JS / WEBGL2

FIRE IN THETERRACES.

SMELTING LAB

A furnace in the hillside

FIRE IN THE
TERRACES.