HistoryWiz: Yoruba Artists

	*terra cotta mask*
In 1911 a German ethnographer, Leo Frobenius visited Ile-Ife and discovered some sculptures that the local people dug up to use in religious rituals and then returned to the earth. The statues in bronze and terra cotta were so naturalistic that he did not believe that they were made by Africans. He insisted that he had discovered the remains of the lost Greek city of Atlantis. Study by other archeologists revealed that this art was the work of the Yoruba. The statues date between 1000 to 1399. The artists of Ile-Ife did not sign their work and little is known about their status in Yoruba society. Information about contemporary Yoruba (since 1800) indicates that sculptors are men and potters women. We cannot be sure that this was true in ancient Ife however.