As a next step, Ling Roth has pointed out that as there is hardly a traveler from Africa who has not recorded the art of iron smelting among the Negro or Bantu tribes, "we may accept as a fact that the art of smelting iron is a very old one in Africa." Not only does the recent evidence point out that iron smelting _per se_ was an old and widespread practice in Africa, but, in addition, reports a similar method of metal working as discovered in the Benin country to have been in vogue in other and widely separated parts of Africa. For example, Bowditch[54] describes a method of casting on the Volta River, where a wood core was used instead of sand, while Robinson[55] states that at Kano "there are on sale swords, spears and many other objects made of native wrought iron. The article desired is first formed in wax and from this clay model is made into which the molten iron can be poured."[56] This, it would seem, reduces considerably the need for postulating modern influence so far as the _method_ is concerned. And even if modern influence were responsible, it could hardly have been Arab or Portuguese, for up to date no such objects as above described have been found among the ruins of the Islamic civilization. And on the other hand, as Ling Roth has said, "we are still quite in the dark as to the existence of any such high-class art in the Iberian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century; and we know that there was not much of this art in the rest of Europe."[57] The only serious evidence, if even it might be so called, which was ever advanced as indicating Portuguese origin for this art was the fact that on some of the plaques from Benin there were found Portuguese heads or figures. But this, instead of indicating a Portuguese origin, gives, when carefully studied, reasonable evidence to the contrary.