The Development of Everyday Tools

The Development of Pottery and Metal Tools

According to recent excavation reports by archaeologists, agricultural remains in Thailand date to 15,000 years ago, remains of rice farming are traced to 9,000 years ago, and bronze relics in Vietnam go back 6,000 years. The round millstone for grinding grain — husking it and making flour — works by feeding dry grain between an upper and a lower stone while turning it, so that husked flour is pushed out from between the pressed stones; it is also called a dorittgae. It was in use 26,000 years ago, according to ancient relics from the Indonesian islands, and it remained an essential of daily life among the peoples of Southeast Asia and the natives of North and South America until recently. These farming tools are said to have been used in Egypt and Southwest Asia 12,000 years ago.

3. Eden in the East by Stephen Oppenheimer 1998

Charles Higham described how these people farmed rice and how their living area extended from here to the mouth of the Yangtze, and Wilhelm Solheim argued that their agricultural culture had been part of daily life since before the great thaw (12,000–7,000 years ago). The Stone Age industrial revolution of firing clay in the fire to make vessels took place in Southeast Asia 12,000 years ago, and appears in Southwest Asia 9,000 years ago. Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia were connected by land before the European glaciers melted (between 12,000 and 7,000 years ago) and the sea level rose, and Austronesians speaking Austro-Asiatic languages lived there. Research on Neolithic life among these people has been reported by many scholars.

Looking at the Neolithic life of the dolmen builders, we find that they used plain (undecorated) pottery of fired clay, raised livestock such as cattle, dogs, and pigs, and also used bronze metal tools. Plain pottery is the form that preceded comb-pattern pottery, and it is a relic showing a settled agricultural age. For a long time pottery was not set on the ground but placed on wooden stands, so at first the bottoms were pointed; as pottery became common, it was set down on the ground and the bottoms began to flatten. When bronze tools came into use, the comb pattern appeared in pottery making, and the region of the world
where comb-pattern pottery is most commonly excavated is the Korean Peninsula.

It is generally called "comb pattern" because a comb-shaped stamping tool was pressed or drawn across the outer surface of the vessel in short lines. The comb pattern takes many forms depending on the earthenware, but the most characteristic in Korea is made of short lines drawn in one direction, or alternating in direction. The vessels range from large and small jar-shaped crocks to pots, bowls, and small dishes. Some are made of clay mixed only with sand, others with asbestos or talc fragments, and brown is the basic color. They were generally fired at about 600–700°C, and could be made in a pit dug in the ground by building a wood fire, without any special kiln. It seems they were first used as ritual vessels at ancestral rites and then came into use for storage, cooking, and eating.

We can see that comb-pattern pottery, which began on the Korean Peninsula, spread widely through the surrounding regions such as China's Dongbei [東北] (the Northeast) and Yanhaizhou [沿海州] (the Maritime Province), and passed through Siberia to be distributed across northern Europe as Kammkeramik (櫛文土器). Judging from the simplicity of its patterns and from radiocarbon dates, comb-pattern pottery on the Korean Peninsula seems to have begun earliest. The Neolithic sites can be broadly divided into four regions: the northeastern coast, the west coast, the east coast, and the south coast.

The criteria include material (base clay), color, thickness, hardness, pattern, and vessel shape. At the Amsa-dong site on the middle reaches of the Han River, the vessels traditionally have a sandy base clay, are shaped like half an egg, and are drawn mainly with fish-bone patterns, which shows them to be the products of a seafaring people; by size, they fall into about three groups according to use. At the Jitap-ri site in Hwanghae Province and the Seopohang and Nongpo-dong sites in North Hamgyeong Province, flat-bottomed pottery of fine clay appears from an early period. Going to the Osan-ri area of Gangwon Province, flat-bottomed clay pottery mainly with pressed-and-stamped patterns appears. On the south coast, flat-bottomed and round-bottomed (including pointed-bottomed) pottery coexist from an early period. So the vessel shapes must have been varied as well. There is much plain pottery here, and in particular appliqué-pattern pottery has been unearthed, so this seems to be where it began earliest. At the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, early pottery forms begin with plain pottery and simple comb patterns with egg-shaped bottoms, while toward the northeastern peninsula and Siberia the pottery shows later features of flat bottoms and complex comb patterns — which suggests that comb-pattern pottery began at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula.

The comb-pattern pottery found throughout the Korean Peninsula is the most outstanding in variety, pattern, and quantity. It is found on the Korean Peninsula as well as in Siberia, China, and Japan. On the Korean Peninsula in particular, not only is comb-pattern pottery found in large quantity and great variety, but much of it was made earlier than that of other countries. Meanwhile, the appliqué-pattern pottery of the south coast and the pottery of Osan-ri are earlier than comb-pattern pottery and are dated to around 8000 BC. The long history of the pottery found in Japan supports this.

In our country, not only dolmens but also the stone dagger (石短劍, 磨製石劍) — the prototype (原型) of the sword — are found in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world. Bronze Age cultural relics of Gojoseon in Manchuria have been excavated dating to 4,400 years ago, while Bronze Age relics of the Yellow River region date to 4,200 years ago. The stone daggers found in South Korea show the earliest form of the transition to bronze metal daggers: the blade (劍身) and hilt (劍把) of the stone dagger are joined as one piece. Then we see the change in form as another hilt was attached to this. It seems the lute-shaped (bipa-shaped) dagger was first made in the south coast region of the Korean Peninsula and later produced in large numbers in Manchuria through the movement of peninsular people. Straight-bladed swords excavated in the coastal regions of Britain and Europe are similar in form to the stone daggers made in South Korea. Clearly, looking at dolmens and the relics found in them, we can see that the dolmens and relics of Europe spread with the movements of the seafaring people of the Korean Peninsula.

Through its coverage of dolmens in 30 regions of seven countries from the Korean Peninsula to Europe, the KNN broadcast brought newly to light, from the standpoint of human archaeology, the vigorous maritime activity of seafaring peoples, including the ancient Hae (Hwan, Han) people. The greatest concentration in the world (20,000) is at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, and they connect along the coastlines through Southeast Asia (10,000) to western Europe, distributed at some 60,000 sites in all. They appear to be the traces of modern humans who left Africa, reached the Korean Peninsula, and then moved along the coastlines east to South America and west to western Europe. (The photos show the world distribution of dolmens and a Korean smithy.)

What we see in The Smithy by the Joseon-dynasty painter Kim Deuk-sin is the use of metal tools, which at first was the industrial revolution of prehistoric times. The use of wooden implements belonged to the matrilineal society, but as metal tools came into use, industry developed and the social role of men began to stand out. Natural stone came to be dressed into flat slabs, and large stones were made into six-sided rectangular blocks that were easier to transport. Stone-cist tombs began to appear in place of the wooden coffins and earthenware-jar burials of ancestral religion. The patrilineal society, advancing from the gathering-type farming of the matrilineal society to industrial-type farming that dug the earth with metal tools, came to dominate. In the age of dolmens, East Asia's industrial revolution seems to have started human history anew, like a sudden mutation.

Humanity's skill at building boats began as early as the use of fire to cook food. Humans, who could live only where there was water, began tying pieces of wood together to float on the water, and weaving bamboo together to use as boats is still commonly seen in East Asia today. The boat made before there were metal tools was the straw boat. Like the thatched roofs of Korean houses (photo below), seaside farmhouses were roofed with the straw or reeds left over after the autumn harvest. Boats woven of straw and reeds can be seen on Korea's Jeju Island and in many places in Southeast Asia, and they are common in Peru in South America, which is connected with Southeast Asian culture; this is the oldest method of boatbuilding in human history. That straw boats remain on every continent makes us imagine an age of navigation, before the Metal Age, that connected the continents. We come to understand that the thatched roofs and straw boats of Korea were the seafaring technology of Stone Age humanity. The ways of building dwellings and boats handed down from the Stone Age — before wood was worked with metal tools — to the present have been well preserved on the Korean Peninsula.

From the Stone Age, people built boats and understood the seasonal changes of weather and climate and the flow of ocean currents, so they could make ocean voyages. The ancient people of East Asia, accustomed to the four seasons, were used to long-distance travel like migratory birds, and had the ability to fast and hibernate for longer than today's Eskimos; so they possessed the endurance and survival ability to cross the Pacific from the island nations of Southeast Asia, using the currents and winds that run parallel to the equator, and reach the Pacific coast of South America (Peru). That East Africans live in New Guinea and Polynesians live in South America is due to the linkage of the equatorial currents. It seems that East Asians began to settle in Samoa and the island kingdom of Tonga from this time as well.

The time has come for today's intellectuals to wake from the dream in which they say Europe's dolmens are the work of extraterrestrials (外界人) and imagine that Mediterranean culture came from Atlantis. The architectural style of the dolmens scattered around Britain's Stonehenge, the Bretagne (Brittany) region of France, and Spain is, compared with the early style of the Korean Peninsula, a far later and more advanced form. If the dolmens of Europe date to only 4,000–5,000 years ago, those of the Korean Peninsula go back more than 8,000 years. In the many places along the coast of western Europe where the Neolithic seafaring people of East Asia migrated along the coastlines, the language and customs of East Asians remain. I expect such evidence to appear more and more as knowledge of East Asian history spreads.

The Iron Age culture produced by the high heat of coal fires also began in Manchuria, and early on people learned that a magnetized iron needle points north. When the seafaring people of East Asia, who had found their direction by the sun and shadows by day and by the position of the Big Dipper by night, came to possess the compass, they gained the ability to carry East Asian culture along the sea lanes to every continent of the world.

Life and culture in the Neolithic period on the Korean Peninsula changed greatly over a long span of time. The matrilineal household that depended on gathering natural foods in primitive times changed to the patrilineal household of productive farming, and pottery industrialized from plain pottery to comb-pattern pottery. The process in East Asia by which the lying dolmen, a female symbol, changed to the standing stone, a male symbol, and then to a shrine with a lying stone (roof stone) placed on two standing stones, is a prehistoric evolutionary process that can be seen nowhere else in the world. We see that on the Korean Peninsula, where modern humans settled earliest, these prehistoric changes took place in one place alone. And soon after, we also see here the birth of stone-mountain (pyramid) culture, as the earth-mound (Mound) culture of the south joined with dolmen culture.

Looking at climate change on Earth over the past 100,000 years, a warm climate like today's continued from 100,000 to 80,000 years ago; then, from 70,000 years ago, the Earth grew colder and an ice age began over the European continent, the northwest of the Asian continent, and the North American continent. While the ice age continued from then until 12,000 years ago, the sea level was some 100 to 300 meters lower, so today's island nations of Southeast Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines) were part of the Asian continent. In particular, between Indonesia and the Philippines there was a landmass as large as India (Sundaland). Great hopes rest on future undersea exploration for the remains of ancient East Asian culture hidden on this continent that now lies beneath the sea. As this continent sank into the sea, its culture fled east to Polynesia, and some of its people, following the equatorial current, reached South America, where the Olmec culture began; later, it seems, East Asians pioneered the sea route to South America. The Olmec culture is an unprecedented, highly advanced culture that began in South America and appeared in Central America, and the faces of the Olmecs, with large lips, large eyes, and broad noses, are Polynesian in look, closely resembling native Hawaiians.

Of these peoples of Southeast Asia, those who settled in India were the Dravidians; those who moved north along the coastline were the Neolithic people who settled on the east coast of China and the Korean Peninsula, and who later settled in Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet and founded nomadic states. Humans who entered the European continent from Africa before 70,000 years ago did not survive when the ice age began; but the peoples who adapted to the changing climate in Southeast Asia, settled in Southwest Asia, and then migrated along the coastlines to settle in Europe grew accustomed to long winters — their black hair became blond, their blue eyes and white skin became vulnerable to the sun's heat and ultraviolet rays — and from 9,000 years ago, after the great thaw, they came into contact with Asian culture. The peoples who migrated late from Africa to Southwest Asia combined with peoples who had migrated from densely populated Southeast Asia to become the Arabs; those who advanced inland combined with peoples migrating from East and Southeast Asia to become the Central Asians, who, under pressure from East Asians, migrated into northern India; later, as the Han Chinese, they seem to have migrated into eastern China in the time of the Zhou dynasty and combined with the native people.

Carts Drawn by Oxen and Horses

Because Paleolithic farming began in Southwest Asia and Europe as the ice age ended, it is dated to about 10,000 years ago; in Southeast Asia I imagine it began much earlier, from 20,000 years ago, though no archaeological evidence has yet appeared. Excavations of rice farming in Southeast Asia date to 9,000 years ago, but we can imagine that the use of farm tools, the labor of oxen, and the use of the wheel developed at least thousands of years before Southwest Asia, like silk from the silkworm cocoon.

Oxen pulling the plow began in Southeast Asia, and the practice of rolling logs to move megaliths also began in East Asia, so it seems the wheel was a technology that, like the world's languages beginning in Southeast Asia, brought great change to human life. The history of wheeled vehicles — rickshaws, oxcarts, horse carts, chariots, and so on — is linked with the development of Neolithic farming life. The rickshaw is a two-wheeled cart pulled by a person. It is the earliest form of the cart, and in East Asia it is still used to this day.

When the farming of Southeast Asia reached East Asia and mingled with the nomads' life with horses and dogs, human industry developed, commerce grew along with production, monetary trade began, and science began to develop. Between the horse and the donkey appeared the mule. The mule is born of a horse mother, famed among all the world's beasts for her strength, and a donkey father, whom none can beat for stamina. What's more, as luck would have it, I take after only the good points of my parents, so I am strong and very patient. My looks take after my father — a short neck and a comical appearance — but as for build, I am a worker horse beyond reproach.

The mule doesn't mind a bit of cold or heat, and whether told to cross steep mountains or make a long, long march, it gets it done without falling ill. The cavalry Genghis Khan drove to conquer Europe rode mules. What Napoleon rode across the Alps was not a white horse but in fact a mule. Yet in thousands of years of living, the mule has never borne offspring. The mule lives much longer than its parents, sometimes as long as 50 years, but never sees young of its own born and grow.

As the two-wheeled oxcart developed into the four-wheeled cart, agriculture industrialized, and with metal used for the wheel axles, the two-wheeled horse-drawn cart that began in Manchuria appeared. With horse carts faster than oxen came the chariot, a weapon of tremendous power. The chariots shown in the terracotta pits of the First Emperor of Qin are a symbol of the mobility that founded the world's first empire. Looking at the cavalry and chariots of the First Emperor, who founded his empire 250 years before the Roman Empire, we can imagine that East Asian culture was always ahead of Mediterranean culture.

The Art of War by Sunzi, written in 700 BC, says that the light chariot chigeo (馳車) is an attack vehicle drawn by four horses and a match for 100,000 soldiers. One chigeo made a combat unit of one officer, ten cavalrymen, and five combatants, plus two cooks, one equipment keeper, and two stable keepers and grooms — four horses and 21 soldiers forming a chigeo platoon. The heavy chariot hyeokgeo (革車) was a cart for carrying provisions and weapons, called hyeokgeo [leather cart] because it was covered with leather. It was recorded as a two-wheeled cart drawn by one ox, with a hyeokgeo platoon of one officer, ten infantrymen, and three non-combatants.

Since 1974, of the four pits excavated so far, some 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses, and 150 cavalrymen have been found. Besides soldiers, figures of officials, acrobats, archers, and musicians have also come to light
. Pit No. 1 alone yielded 6,000 figures and 40 chariots. Pit No. 2 holds cavalry and mercenaries of the guard. According to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, 700,000 people were mobilized to build the First Emperor's mausoleum, designed as an underground palace and begun in 246 BC. It held some 100 rivers flowing with mercury, and a walled city with dozens of watchtowers full of treasures and soldiers. It is said that after its completion the workers were buried alive to prevent tomb robbing.

The First Emperor's mausoleum is a pyramid made of earth, 76 meters high and 350 square meters in extent, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. That the Huns of East Asia, possessing such tactics and mobility, conquered Rome and ruled Europe under General Attila in AD 453, 600 years later, shows that the Manchurian and Mongolian peoples were the absolute masters of the Eurasian continent through the power of cavalry and chariots. They later left behind the Turkish and Hungarian peoples of eastern Europe, and seem to have left the history of the Vikings and the Finnish people of northern Europe. There are records of chariot corps being used even in the ancient Shang dynasty.

The Sapsal Dog and the Lion

In the architecture of the nomadic states of East Asia, there was the practice of setting sculptures of the sapsal dog [a shaggy Korean guardian dog] in front of palaces, and later this appeared in Alexander the Great's practice of setting lion sculptures before the gate as guardian spirits. East Asian jade carving was a revolution in which metal mastered stone. The carving skill of East Asia grew into the wood carving of the Indian Dravidians, and the wooden architecture of East Asia became the mother of the stone architecture of the Mediterranean.

Around the time the First Emperor of Qin succeeded the Zhou and founded a unified empire, the Yuezhi, one of the nomadic states of the Liaodong region, migrated to the Ganges basin and founded the Kushan state, which expanded to build the great Kushan Empire, securing territory that stretched across most of northern India and as far as the Caspian Sea in eastern Europe. Later, trading with the Tang dynasty of China and with Rome in Europe, it brought Buddhist culture in India to its peak, and the history of unified empire began in Indian history.

The metal tools of East Asia revived the sculptural art of India, and Indian sculptural art seems to have been carried to Greece by the Phoenicians, where Greek sculpture developed. In the time of India's Kushan Empire, Buddhist art reached its zenith, and through the routes opened by Rome, the Buddhist sculpture of the Kushan state extended to cave sculptures in Africa and along the Red Sea coast. The Kushan Empire of India, founded by East Asians, became the link connecting the Mediterranean and East Asia, and the peak of the culture of humanity's childhood began.