From the 1800s, until as recently as the 1980s, Western art scholars, artists and art critics debated among themselves as to whether before coming under European and Asian influences, the peoples of “Black Africa”
ever had a sense of aesthetics, elegance or artistry.

“Aesthetics” was defined by Eurasiatic scholars as ability to objectively and critically envision, design and create a piece of artistic work and “enjoy” both the creative process and the product of creativity.

Their conclusion was that ancestral Black Africans were far too backward and mentally naïve to handle such a tall order as “aesthetics”.

By the 1920’s Franz Boas, an American Anthropological researcher, who was far ahead of his time, had come to the conclusion that:

1. all human races on earth have fundamental equality in intellectual creativity and

2. that the differences found in artistic and cultural productions of different world races and ethnic groups are due, not to intellectual abilities but rather to geographical environment and historical traditions.

Recently, however, Western art scholars, upon close probing of the historical language patterns and artistic cultural terminologies of some West African languages, such as Yoruba, Akan, Ga, Ewe, etc. have found to their surprise that these ancient languages contain expressions, symbolisms, ideas concepts and related to aesthetics, beauty, art etc.

Present-day Ghanaians have a keen sense of elegance and artistry. This predilection for the elegant is manifested especially in body decoration and aesthetics, and is best exemplified at royal durbars and social festivals. It is vividly portrayed on a daily basis on our wayside billboards and also on our television screens.

Human body art/decoration in Ghana has a long history of some 4000 years duration. Archaeologists who have investigated settlements of the pioneers of farming and village life in prehistoric Ghanaian communities from Gambaga to Ntereso, to Daboya, Kintampo, Begho, Wenchi, Kumasi and southward to the Accra Plains, have consistently found remains of beads made of stone agate, shell, bone etc. These earliest beads range in age between 4000 and 2,500 years.