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Ife Is 700 years old
My analysis moves away from the recent framing of ancient
Ife art from the vantage of Yoruba cultural practices collected
in Nigeria more broadly, and/or the indiscriminate use of
regional and modern Yoruba proverbs, poems, or language idioms
to inform this city’s unique 700-year-old sculptural oeuvre
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/blier/files/blier.pdf

Benin is over 1500 years old
A series of walls marked the incremental growth of the sacred city from 850 AD until its decline in the 16th century. In the 15th century Benin became the greatest city of the empire created by Oba Ewuare. To enclose his palace he commanded the building of Benin's inner wall, an 11-kilometre-long (7 mi) earthen rampart girded by a moat 6 m (20 ft) deep. This was excavated in the early 1960s by Graham Connah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire

Mice research

lol, how can a city with paved roads and courtyards in 1,000AD be just 700 years old.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pave/hd_pave.htm
common sense is not common to people like you obviously.



Abeokuta and Ibadan are both 3rd generation Yoruba cities. Like everyone knows that. They being called "ancient" is in relative terms, not absolute.

This was the extent of the "Yoruba sphere" /cultural influences in 1300

Ofodirinwa:


[b]Benin is over 1500 years old
A series of walls marked the incremental growth of the sacred city from 850 AD until its decline in the 16th century. In the 15th century Benin became the greatest city of the empire created by Oba Ewuare. To enclose his palace he commanded the building of Benin's inner wall, an 11-kilometre-long (7 mi) earthen rampart girded by a moat 6 m (20 ft) deep. This was excavated in the early 1960s by Graham Connah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Empire

Benin as you know it today (Ibinu ==> Ubini) is 800 or so years old .
Before that there was nothing called Benin anywhere in this world. You will have to search for terms like Edo or maybe Idu instead.
And while Yorubas (Ife) and Edos (Benin) both had their pre Oduduwa dynasties, they are both shrouded in mysteries and are not exactly reliable or exact. Many are semi-mythological in approach. The Edos although have been able to do a better job at preserving the name list of some of their ogiso kings than the Yorubas have done of their Pre-oduduwa Obas.
This is only because of the early written documentation of Benin oral history due to very early portuguese visitation, and nothing else.

To the actual premise of your thread title, I am not exactly sure what the oldest monument in Yorubaland is, but the Oranmiyan obelisk, Sungbo Eredo, Ife Paved roads, and many of the old ife terracottas and bronze heads are surely very old candidates.

Ofodirinwa:
A lot of history have been revised for one reason or another.

First, the Bini as an empire came before any Yoruba fiefdom and this is proven by the carbon dating of Bini artefacts.

Second, while there was an existence of an Oyo, the 'Oyo Empire' remains largely unproven with little to no first-hand evidence to support its existence and extreme contradictions as to facts around it. For example, it's said to have existed at the same time that the Bini empire existed while the Bini empire held dominion over at the same time.

What is first hand evidence? lol... or do you mean written accounts of the Oyo empire by travelling Europeans? There is PLENTY of that.
Also I can't understand the second part of your statement "while the Bini empire held dominion over at the same time".... Benin held no dominion over Oyo, and Oyo held no dominion over Benin. Benin was a forest state, Oyo was a savannah state. Different political systems, different lifestyles, and different operational mechanisms. Their path never really crossed.

Unless I am misunderstanding you.

YonkijiSappo:


Benin as you know it today (Ibinu ==> Ubini) is 800 or so years old .
Before that there was nothing called Benin anywhere in this world. You will have to search for terms like Edo or maybe Idu instead.
And while Yorubas (Ife) and Edos (Benin) both had their pre Oduduwa dynasties, they are both shrouded in mysteries and are not exactly reliable or exact. Many are semi-mythological in approach. The Edos although have been able to do a better job at preserving the name list of some of their ogiso kings than the Yorubas have done of their Pre-oduduwa Obas.
This is only because of the early written documentation of Benin oral history due to very early portuguese visitation, and nothing else.

Do you have a source for this information? There's a a lot of revisionism in the air so we need to verify where the info is coming from to see if it's credible

YonkijiSappo:


What is first hand evidence? lol... or do you mean written accounts of the Oyo empire by travelling Europeans? There is PLENTY of that.
Also I can't understand the second part of your statement "while the Bini empire held dominion over at the same time".... Benin held no dominion over Oyo, and Oyo held no dominion over Benin. Benin was a forest state, Oyo was a savannah state. Different political systems, different lifestyles, and different operational mechanisms. Their path never really crossed.

Unless I am misunderstanding you.

Every map from the era has that era cited as Oyo's territory under 'Benin' or 'Great Benin'

Thanks for some of your answers, I'm finding sources to some of the claims. While they're impressive, it's becoming clearer that Benin pre-dates Ile Ife

"The first Yoruba state was Ile-Ife, said to have been founded around 1000 CE"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_West_Africa



1100 AD, Ile-Ife
http://archaeology.about.com/od/archaeologistsgj/qt/ile_ife.htm


Ife Bronze headc.1300 C.E.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Head_from_Ife#Impact_on_art_history


Ife Pre-Pavement and Pavement Era (800–1000 A.D.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pave/hd_pave.htm

.

Ofodirinwa:


Even today the Brights are called Bright of Benin and Bright of Biafra (which was renamed after the Biafran war by the British)
No Bright of Oyo, or Oyo on maps of the era.

There were Oyo people, but an Oyo Empire seems to be a modern concoction

European visitors to the coast heard more about Benin than they heard about Oyo for the simple reason that Benin was much nearer to the coast and more involved in coastal matters than Oyo was. Oyo was situated in the savanna region, north of the rainforest. Much of its expansionist wars were directed in grassland areas where they could use their cavalry effectively. Areas such as the grassland Aja kingdoms of what in now Benin Republic. Expecting to hear 'Bight of Oyo' would be like expecting to hear 'Bight of Borno'.

As for Oyo Empire being a modern concotion, well that can only be said by someone who has never bothered to look up the primary sources (i.e., contemporary written evidence) of Oyo history.

A good place to start would be Robin Law's compilation of primary sources, "Contemporary Source Material For The History of Old Oyo Empire 1627 to 1824." You can very easily find a pdf online.

A slave trader Archibald Dalzel who lived in the Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1700s also recorded the conquest and subjugation of Dahomey to Oyo authority. This is an eye-witness account. His book is also available online at archive.org if you want to have a look.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41856706?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents here it is
Your theory doesn't hold because they knew about Hausa and Bornu and that was in fact their primary interest in reach when they spoke of Oyo. Oyo was a kingdom but never an empire. By all records the strongest kingdom of the yoruba states

Ofodirinwa:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41856706?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents here it is
Your theory doesn't hold because they knew about Hausa and Bornu and that was in fact their primary interest in reach when they spoke of Oyo.

What are you even talking about? Of course the Europeans knew Hausa and Borno. Same way they also knew about Oyo, going by ample references to Oyo in the sources. What I was responding to is your comment on the absence of a 'Bight of Oyo' as an indicator that Oyo was probably not all that. There was no 'Bight of Borno' or 'Bight of Hausa' either. So you didn't have much of a point there.

Oyo was a kingdom but never an empire. By all records the strongest kingdom of the yoruba states

*Chuckles* Of course you have every right to reject facts.