History
According to a legend recorded in the Samguk Yusa written in the 13th century, in the year 42 CE, six eggs descended from heaven with a message that they would be kings. Six boys were born, and within 12 days they grew mature. One of them, named Suro, became the king of Geumgwan Gaya, and the other five founded the remaining five Gayas, namely Daegaya, Seongsan Gaya, Ara Gaya, Goryeong Gaya, and Sogaya.
The Gaya polities evolved out of the chiefly political structures of the twelve tribes of the ancient Byeonhan, one of the Samhan confederacies. The loosely organized chiefdoms resolved into six Gaya groups, centered around Geumgwan Gaya. On the basis of archaeological sources as well as limited written records, scholars such as Sin have identified the late 3rd century as a period of transition from Byeonhan to Gaya, with increasing military activity and changing funerary customs. Sin further argues that this was associated with the replacement of the previous elite in some principalities (including Daegaya) by elements from Buyeo, who brought a more militaristic ideology and style of rule.
The Gaya Confederacy disintegrated under pressure from Goguryeo between 391 and 412 CE, although the last Gaya polities remained independent until they were conquered by Silla in 562 CE, as punishment for assisting Baekje in a war against Silla (see Daegaya).
Read more about this topic: Gaya Confederacy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)