It is not often that you find a group of nation states protecting a sister nation state, because to them, that state is the source of human civilization. That nation state being protected is the Ife Ooni and the protectors were the other Yoruba states of Oyo, Ijesa, Owu, Benin, Ijebu and etc before British colonisation. The Owu capital was destroyed by the other Yoruba states for breaking the decorum. Aare Ona Kakanfo Afonja compelled Alaafin Aole to commit suicide for sending the Aare to sack an Ife village. That was the situation in Yoruba land before British colonisation and it is the tradition that the people from Benin (Igodomigodo) are attempting to rubbish. It is unlikely that a replica of such an arrangement exists anywhere in the world apart from among the Yoruba and some other West African people who see Ife as the source of human civilization. Ife to the Yoruba represents the first land that protruded above the oceans and one Ife is established by or settled from another Ife from the beginning of time. So the people in Ife have an anthem enjoining them to remember they are the head of the world and origin of human civilization. This of course is purely symbolic but yet instructive because no doubt, the tradition was kicked off from the very beginning when ancient astronauts from outer space landed on Earth and founded the first Ife. Ife is almost the least politically relevant or strong among the Yoruba states, so the headship is merely symbolic even among the Yoruba. It is just to keep tradition.

All the above does not mean the other languages in the world derived from Yoruba as proposed by the new Ooni because even Yoruba is a mere derivative of Orofe an ancient language of an ancient Ife still known by some Awo, even that Orofe must be derived from earlier Orofes and etc. Today, we are not speaking a language that our ancestors of ten thousand years ago will be able to understand. This is why the world languages are not derived from Yoruba or Orofe. Maybe the earliest Orofe though but when the first Ife was established, there may have been less advanced hunter gatherers on Earth. However, the language of Kemitic Egypt was an ancestor of modern Yoruba language. Anyone can see this from the Ptahhotep saying 'Bu nfr zu bw bin' meaning where we loved became an evil place. The modern Yoruba equivalent is 'Ibi a fe du ibi bi' and it can be easily seen that it is thesame language despite that the person who rendered it in that form is not a Yoruba speaker.

So one might say people like the Biblical Moses, ancient Jews who lived in Egypt, Egyptians and etc will be understood to a reasonable extent by modern Yoruba speakers but we the Yoruba are not Egyptians just like the English are Celts and not a Germanic people despite speaking English, a Germanic language. Celts on the British isles are typically made up of 70 percent Celtic genes and 30 percent Germanic genes yet they speak a Germanic language. It is something like that that happened to the Yoruba after a huge number of Egyptians relocated to the Ife area thousands of years ago. We took up their language and abandoned our old Akokoid languages but we are still thesame people, though now mixed with our long lost brothers, the Kemitic Egyptians. This is obviously why the Yoruba have been observed to have non zero Neanderthal genetic content. The Kemitic Egyptians brought the Neanderthal genes which they earlier got from European origin people with part Neanderthal ancestors. So some Neanderthals who roamed Asia and Europe are my ancestors as a Yoruba person.

However tonal languages are more in their ancient form than non tonal languages. Yoruba has five tones of which three are in common use. The other two are in words like Alagba (chief priest) and Olopa (police) not in much use. There is an Asian language with 8 tones. So you will be able to speak the language, not only with a talking drum as do the Yoruba with Yoruba but probably with a piano as well!

All languages were obviously tonal in the past and still are to some extent since accents are also tones but if a language is constantly disturbed, it can lose tonality gradually. Ancient Greek was written with diacritical marks like modern Yoruba and spoken with tonality just like modern Yoruba but modern Greek is a non tonal language like English and is no longer written with diacritical marks. I believe if a language that lost tonality is allowed to rest it will redevelop tonality again.

The position of the Ooni might be because modern Yoruba is a descendant of Kemitic Egyptian and Kemitic Egyptian is acknowledged as the fore runner in building human civilizations but that is only in recorded history of 5 thousand years ago. The Egyptians themselves spoke of ancient civilizations that far superseded theirs like the Atlantis, they spoke of many floods destroying series of Earth civilizations mocking those who maintain a story of one flood destroying the Earth. Then they buried their dead facing West Africa, signifying home and at the end most of them relocated South to join the Ife people after the demise of their civilization. The Ife story was not started by them, nor the Olodumare concept or the Ifa divination system. All those are indigenous to the Ife people. Apart from being ravaged by pestilence, I believe the Ife people were relatively undisturbed from the beginning of time. So also many other groups across the globe. Our old language was Akokoid according to an Awo I heard on radio who said Arigidi was the word used by our ancestors to refer to a house before the word ile came into widespread use. That word occurs today in place names in the Akoko area.

So all languages are modern languages and they are not really descended from each other but the languages of Asia and Africa are more in their original state than European languages since many of them are still tonal. The origin of language remains one of the most difficult questions to answer just like the origin of human existence and saying one modern language is descended from another modern language does not suffice.