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extended essay brainstorm: phase 1, I found one of the rich ethnic…

- - - - They were predominantly farmers, they were also skilled in the working of metals. Nok art is characterized by life-sized sculpting of humans, with a lot of attention given to the sculpting of elaborate beads and intricate hair patterns. None of the Nok art pieces survived fully, so what we have are parts, heads, feets e.t.c. However, the most popular ones are sculpting of heads. The Nok culture was said to have disappeared sometime around 500 AD with no trace. However, it can be said that their art developed without outside influence.
    - - Ife is said to be the cradle of civilization of the Yorubas. According to Yoruba mythology, it was where creation started, with Obatala being the creator and Oduduwa being the first Ooni, ruler of Ife. A lot of rulers of several parts of Yoruba land can trace their ancestry to Odudua. It is, therefore, kind of difficult to imagine such great people without art. In 1938 about 18 pieces of Brass arts where found in Wunmonije compound in Ile-Ife during a building project.
        
        The most popular of these is called the Ife bronze head. It is the depiction of a portrait of a man, and it is said to represent a king, King Obalufon II. He was said to be the patron of the bronze casters at that time, and now he had become the patron deity of bronze casters in Ile-Ife. Majority of the sculptures found in Ife art are of both gods and rulers, some of them life-sized and some under-life sized.
        
        Ife art consists of terracotta sculptures, brass castings also and some stone art, with the majority of them depicting human heads, some also busts. This art flourished between the 13th and 15th Century.
        
        The quality of these artefacts (both technical and artistic) was so high that westerners didn’t believe it was made by the Yoruba race. The realism was great, so it was postulated that they were made by the Greeks, some talked about a white Fulani race or even Mongoloid race who had made the pieces. However time solved the problem, and it has been agreed, the art was very indigenous with no influence from the outside world.
        
        The pieces were made from brass, using a method known as the lost wax method, because no one has been able to reproduce the method. Brass is very difficult to manoeuvre, civilizations such as the Greeks and the Romans tried but failed. However, the Ife art began to decline sometime around the 16th CE as influence moved to the Benin empire. There Ife arts is generally depictions of rulers and gods.