The bronze heads of Ife
Yoruba portrait bronzes that astonished 20th-century Europe
In the 12th–15th centuries the artists of Ile-Ife, the sacred city of the Yoruba, cast in copper alloys and modelled in terracotta strikingly naturalistic heads of rulers. Ife was one of the largest cities of 14th-century West Africa. A find of 1938 overturned the European belief that such art could not have arisen in Africa.
Wikipedia (English) · 13th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- c. 1300 Onset of the Little Ice Age — same year
- 1309–1377 Avignon Papacy — 9 years later
- 1315–1317 Great Famine — 15 years later
Asia
- 1281 Kamikaze, the divine wind — 19 years earlier
- 1293 Founding of Majapahit — 7 years earlier
Americas
- c. 1325 Founding of Tenochtitlan — 25 years later
Oceania
- c. 1280 Polynesians settle New Zealand — 20 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Marco Polo (aged 46)
- Dante Alighieri (aged 35)
- Edward I Longshanks (aged 61)
- Osman I (aged 42)
- Philip IV the Fair (aged 32)
- Mansa Musa (aged 20)
- Orhan (aged 19)
- Emperor Go-Daigo (aged 12)
- Ivan Kalita (aged 12)
- Albert I (aged 45)