On finding a bronze head at Ife in 1910, the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius decided it was a relic of Atlantis.

1300 · 1910 · apart: 610 years

He doubted Africans could have cast it, but the Ife heads are the work of Yoruba artists.

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The event

• The bronze heads of Ifec. 1300 · Ile-Ife (Nigeria). 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.

13th century · 20th century

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