Early man first inhabited the Korean Peninsula roughly half a million years ago. In the past decade archaeological excavations have shed much new light on the prehistoric society of Korea. At Seokjang-ri near Gongju, Chungcheongnam-do province, artifacts of lower Paleolithic industry including choppers and scrapers were unearthed in the lower part of the site. Bifacial chopper or chopping-tool culture followed. Hand axes and cleavers produced by men in later eras were also uncovered. At Sangwon near Pyongyang, numerous fossilized faunal remains were discovered from dietary debris of the early inhabitants of the Lower Paleolithic Age.
During the Middle Paleolithic Period, Pre-Neanderthal and Neanderthal men dwelt
in caves at Jeommal near Jecheon and Durubong near Cheongju. From the two caves,
fossil remains of rhinoceros, cave bear, brown bear,
maccacus, hyena
and numerous deer (Pseudaxi gray var.), all extinct species, were excavated.
Some bones of dietary debris were engraved with delineations of human faces
as well as animal figures such as tigers, leopards, fish, birds, etc. These
findings have led to the conclusion that Neanderthal man had the capacity to
create art.
From Jeommal cave a tool, possibly for hunting, fashioned from the radius of
a Pre-Neanderthal man was unearthed, along with hunting and kitchen tools of
animal bones. The shells of nuts collected for nourishment were also uncovered.
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Stone Implements Excavated
at Sangmuryong-ri Village. |
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Site of Amsa-dong Prehistoric
Relics. |
In Seokjang-ri and elsewhere in the riverine sites, numerous chipped stone tools
were found with definite traces of Paleolithic tradition, made of fine-grain
rocks such as quartzite, porphyry, obsidian, chert, and felsite manifest acheulian,
mousteroid, and levalloisian. Those of the chopper tradition are of much cruder
shape and chipped from quartz and pegmatite. Seokjang-ri middle layers showed
that early men hunted with these bola or missile stones.
There are more upper Paleolithic sites as well. From an interesting habitation
site at Seokjang-ri locality 1, some human hairs of Mongoloid origin were found
with limonitic and manganese pigments near and around a hearth, as well as animal
figurines such as a dog, tortoise and bear made of rock, which carborn dated
some 20,000 years. The living floor of compact clay was hollowed out in the
shape of a whale. It is quite possible that was done to pray for good fishing
and hunting. Obsidian microblades were used for the carving and scraping of
fish. The people may have been the early
homo sapiens of Mongoloid stock
who were ancestors of modern Koreans.
A few Mesolithic sites have been discovered recently with microlits. Many of
the Mesolithic sites in the coastal areas of the west seem to have sunk due
to the rise of sea levels during the Atlantic Neolithic Period. Flat-bottomed
unmarked pottery of the early Neolithic Period first appeared, followed by pottery
with geometrical marks, a sign of the cultural relationship between the Ural-Altaic
regions where similar pottery developed.
With a few deviations, this pottery with a geometric surface design is similar
to kamm-keramic or comb pottery, which is widespread in Korea. The design is
incised in a herring bone pattern or simple sets of slanted lines. This pottery
is of a half-egg shape with a round bottom and straight lip. The pottery was
made of clay or sandy clay mixed with talc, shell, asbestos and steatite temper,
built by the coiling method and fired at a low temperature in an open kiln.
There are numerous sites of Neolithic habitation. Known for the cluster of dug-out
huts of this era are the following: Cheongho-ri along the Daedonggang river
near Pyongyang; Misa-ri and Amsa-dong along the Han-gang river near Seoul; and
Dongsam-dong in the Nakdonggang river estuary near Busan. These sites are of
the early Neolithic Period, which came into existence about 6 to 7 thousand
years ago. The people of this period lived by fishing, hunting and gathering
wild fruits. They had also started to grind acorns and wild grains on saddle
querns.
In the late Neolithic Period, probably the fourth millennium B.C., there was
a change in the surface design on pottery. Parallel wavy lines or sets of pit
marks in the shape of lightning flashes were adopted. There are many sites with
this type of pottery along the riverine areas of the western and southern coasts
of the peninsula.
Incipient dibbling and planting were developed together with the breeding of
cattle. Digging sticks made of animal horn and stone hoes were used in the early
stage of farming. At the Jitap-ri site, carbonized millet was found in the pottery.
The early Neolithic peoples made spindles and spindle-whorls to spin and weave
clothes and fishing nets. They gradually began to use bone needles for sewing;
they also selected seeds and destroyed weeds to protect the crops. Their huts
were built in a round or semi-rectangular dugout form with a hearth; one of
these with five hearths has been uncovered.
They believed in animism, and thought all natural objects had spirits. Shamanism
was prevalent as it was elsewhere in the northeastern Asian regions. Shamans
were believed to have supernatural power enabling them to contact the heavenly
spirit in order to protect the family and community from evil spirits.
The Bronze Age began around the 15th century B.C. Pottery without any surface
design and with a flat bottom was made during this period, as well as some black
pottery and burnished red pottery. Red beans, soybeans and millet were cultivated,
as indicated by the imprint of such grains found on the surface of the pottery
at Yangpyeong, and some gray organic flour was found in pottery at Hogok-dong,
Musan. Agriculture during the Bronze Age included rice cultivation in the southern
part of Korea, as evidenced by the discovery of carbonized rice grains at Hunam-ri,
Yeoju. One of the dwelling sites of this period was carbon dated 2760 B.C. A
bronze ritual ornament unearthed near Daejeon depicts a man ploughing the land,
and semi-lunar knives of polished stone are found almost everywhere in the site
of unmarked pottery. Rectangular huts and burial sites in the form of dolmen
and stone cists are much larger than those of the previous era.
As agriculture developed, surplus was stored, and specialization of labor into
peasant, artisan and bondman emerged, a change which brought about mutual influence
between kinship groups. The increase of food production contributed to the rise
of population and necessitated migration; some of the Neolithic people possibly
migrated to Kyushu, southern Japan at this stage.
Clans within these communities all came into contact with each other and together
they made advances in the technology of smelting bronze, which also stimulated
peaceful relations as well as the practice of exogamy. Metallurgy possibly started
from firing at pottery kilns. The rise of smiths and miners of raw material
also contributed to the emergence of the ruling and the ruled. The distribution
of dolmens and menhirs is pervasive in Korea, showing that the spread of megalithic-bronze
culture developed extensively on the peninsula.
In this period the mastery of bronze technology served as a powerful weapon
for the conquest of different clans, and thereby expedited the rise of larger
units of tribal society.