Forty million strong, heirs of Ife’s bronzes and the Oyo Empire, their gods crossed the Atlantic in slave ships — and came back as world culture.
The Yoruba are one of Africa’s largest ethnic groups, numbering over 40 million people, concentrated in southwestern Nigeria with communities in Benin and Togo. Creators of the Ife bronze masterpieces and the Oyo Empire — pre-colonial West Africa’s greatest power — they built one of the world’s oldest urban civilizations.
