African Atlantis and the Wonders of the Ife SculpturesAround the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

African Atlantis and the Wonders of the Ife SculpturesAround the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most academia in history, archaeology, and anthropology tended to look upon Africa as an unimportant backwater, inhabited by simple savages who have never been able to achieve any measure of advanced civilization.  In the late 19th century the German archaeologist Leo Frebonius discovered the first of a large series of cast metal sculptures in what is now modern day Ife, Nigeria.  Often called “bronze sculptures”, the pieces are actually made from a copper/zinc/lead alloy that is closer to brass than bronze, demonstrating that the people who made these sculptures obviously had very advanced knowledge and skills in metallurgy.  What was most incredible was the precise attention to detail each of the works displayed, giving the sculptures an almost lifelike appearance.   Such detail reminded Frebonius of sculptures originating from Ancient Greece and Rome.  Thus, it was then that Frebonius jumped to an incredible conclusion.  From his point of view the sculptures could not have been made by the local people, who he believed obviously could have never built a civilization capable of such works. Frebonius himself once remarked,“I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of so much loveliness”So he theorized that the sculptures were Greek in origin, produced by Greek artisans who lived in a long lost Greek colony.  Then Frebonius went once step further by proposing that an ancient white civilization had once dominated Africa long before settlement by non-white peoples.  This theory was called the “African Atlantis”, which proposed that an advanced white civilization once dominated Africa, and that traditional African civilization was merely a residue of that older, lost civilization.  The African Atlantis theory became an extremely popular theory, upheld by historians and academics throughout Europe and North America.  Further discoveries of other artifacts and relics of African civilization were likewise excused away, being cited as remnants of the lost African AtlantisOf course today such a theory has been debunked a racist humbuggery, and modern scholars conclusively prove that the African Atlantis never existed.  The true artists behind the Ife sculptures were an advanced civilization called the Yoruba people, who managed a powerful empire which existed between the 12th and 17th centuries.  Similar pieces demonstrating equal or more sophisticated technology have been discovered all over West Africa, crafted by various different cultures. -- source link
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