Adinkra

Main article: Adinkra symbols

Adinkra symbols by Robert Sutherland Rattray

During the 13th century, Ghanaians evolved their precise art of adinkra printing. Hand-published and
hand-embroidered adinkra clothes have been made and used completely via the then Ghanaian royalty
for devotional ceremonies. Each of the motifs that make up the corpus of adinkra symbolism has a name
and that means derived from a proverb, a ancient occasion, human attitude, ethology, plant life-form, or
shapes of inanimate and guy-made gadgets. These are graphically rendered in stylised geometric
shapes. The meanings of the motifs may be classified into aesthetics, ethics, human members of the
family, and ideas.[267]

The Adinkra symbols have a decorative characteristic as tattoos however also represent gadgets that
encapsulate evocative messages that bring traditional information, components of lifestyles or the
surroundings. There are many different symbols with awesome meanings, often linked with proverbs. In
the words of Anthony Appiah, they were one of the approach in a pre-literate society for "assisting the
transmission of a complex and nuanced frame of practice and perception".[268]