Location: Akwa Ibom, Ondo, Oyo, Sokoto, Gombe, Abia, Anambra and Niger States.
Clay comes from the ground, usually in areas where streams or rivers once flowed.
It is made from minerals, plant life, and animals—all the ingredients of soil. Over time, water pressure breaks up the remains of flora, fauna, and minerals, pulverising them into fine particles. Larger particles are filtered out through rocks and sand, leaving silt to settle into beds of clay. How far silt travels from its source and how pure the silt is determines the type of clay it becomes.
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Most clay minerals form where rocks are in contact with water, air, or steam.
Examples of these situations include weathering boulders on a hillside, sediments on sea or lake bottoms, deeply buried sediments containing pore water, and rocks in contact with water heated by magma (molten rock). All of these environments may cause the formation of clay minerals from pre-existing minerals.
The small size of the particles and their unique crystal structures give clay materials special properties. These properties include: cation exchange capabilities, plastic behaviour when wet, catalytic abilities, swelling behaviour, and low permeability.
Clay is the oldest known ceramic material. Prehistoric humans discovered the useful properties of clay and used it for making pottery. Some of the earliest pottery shards have been dated to around 14,000 BC, and clay tablets were the first known writing medium. Clay is used in many modern industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, and chemical filtering. Between one-half and two-thirds of the world’s population live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essential part of its load-bearing structure.
