ABSTRACT
The acceptance of oral tradition as a form of evidence commits the historian to an attempt to answer questions which neither concern nor would greatly interest the guardians of tradition itself – the rulers and their officials, the drummers, the praise singers, the local patriots. Turning to the problem of chronology, the difficulties are at first sight somewhat less, since much has been asserted about the dating of reigns. To sum up, the evidence derived from the king-lists leads to the tentative conclusion that the major kingdoms of the Yoruba, and also the second dynasty of Benin, were founded around the beginning of the fourteenth century, perhaps in the course of a generation or perhaps during a period of sustained political vigour at Ife lasting for a hundred years or more on either side of 1300.
