Science and Technology in Korea - Prehistory

Prehistory

At the end of the Palaeolithic, people of the Korean Peninsula adopted microlithic stone tool technology, a highly efficient and useful way of making and maintaining a flexible prehistoric toolkit. The Palaeolithic also marks the beginning of a long period of plant and human interaction in which people undoubtedly adopted a number of wild plants for medicinal use.

Archaeological evidence from Gosan-ri in Jeju-do indicates that pottery was first made c. 8500-8000 BC. People depended on gathering, hunting, and fishing as the main source of food until the Middle Jeulmun Period (c. 3500 to 2000 BC) when small-scale cultivation of plants began.

Farmers of the Mumun Period began to use multiple cropping systems of agriculture some time after 1500 BC. This sophisticated technological advance in food production irrevocably altered the subsistence systems of the Mumun and hastened the beginnings of intensive agriculture in the Korean Peninsula. Korea and adjacent areas of East Asia seem to have been a part of the domestication region of soybean (Glycine max) between 1500 and 500 BC.Paddy-field agriculture, a highly complex system of wet-rice cultivation, was also introduced into the southern Korean Peninsula during this period.

Widespread archaeological evidence shows that after 850 BC the technology for heating homes changed. Before 850 BC pit-houses were heated using fire from various kinds of hearths that were dug into the floor of the pit-house. After 850 BC, hearths disappeared from the interior of pit-house architecture and was likely replaced with some kind of brazier-like technology in Hoseo, Honam, and western Yeongnam.

Bronze objects were exchanged into the Korean Peninsula from the outside before 900 BC. However, the moulds for bronze casting from Songguk-ri and an increased number of bronze artifacts indicates that people in the southern part of the peninsula engaged in bronze metallurgical production starting from c. 700 BC. Several hundred years later iron production was adopted, and Korean-made iron tools and weaponry became increasingly common after approximately 200 BC. Iron tools facilitated the spread of intensive agriculture into new areas of the Korean Peninsula.

Until recently, Koreans were thought to have invented under-floor heating, a system they call "ondol". It was first thought to have been invented by the people of North Okjeo (modern-day Russia's maritime province) around 2,500 years ago. However, the recent discovery of a c. 3,000 year-old equivalent indoor heating system in Alaska has called current explanation into question. The absence of prehistoric and/or ancient ondol features in the area between the two archaeological sites makes it unlikely that the two systems might have come from the same source.