The Korean early Late Paleolithic revisited: a view from Galsanri
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Korean early Late Paleolithic revisited: a view from Galsanri Hyeong Woo Lee 1 & Christopher J. Bae 2 & Changseung Lee 3
Received: 20 August 2015 / Accepted: 28 October 2015 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract The Early to Late Paleolithic transition in eastern Asia is a topic receiving increasing attention in paleoanthropology. Here, we present the findings from Galsanri, an early Late Paleolithic open-air site that dates to the latter part of marine isotope stage 3 in South Korea. Findings from Galsanri suggest the Early to Late Paleolithic behavioral transition was unlikely to have been the result of a simple mass dispersal event from western Eurasia into eastern Asia. The Galsanri lithic assemblage includes typical Early Paleolithic core and flake tools in the same context as Late Paleolithic blades produced on low-quality raw materials and ground stone tools. The implications of the Galsanri findings are discussed in their broader behavioral contexts. Keywords Marine isotope stage 3 . Korea . Late Paleolithic . Blades . Ground stone tools
Introduction The timing and nature of the spread of modern humans across Eurasia is one of the most debated topics in paleoanthropolo-
* Hyeong Woo Lee [email protected] 1
Department Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, South Korea
2
Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way 346 Saunders Hall, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
3
Honam Cultural Property Research Center, 872-1, Gigokri, Damyangkun, Jeollanamdo, South Korea
gy. It is sometimes assumed that the behavioral toolkit that accompanied modern humans facilitated this dispersal. The modern human behavioral toolkit often includes sophisticated stone, bone and antler tools, long-range planning (e.g., building and successfully utilizing boats for oceanic voyages), and symbolic thought (e.g., ochre, burials, and perforated shells, stones, bones, and teeth) among other things (Davidson and Noble 1992; Henshilwood and Marean 2003; McBrearty and Brooks 2000).1Questions do arise as to whether this behavioral toolkit appeared suddenly as a Bpackage^ (Klein 2009) or whether different components of these modern human behaviors appeared gradually (McBrearty 2007; McBrearty and Brooks 2000). The strongest support for the sudden appearance of a modern human behavioral package is the European record, while the clearest corroboration for the gradualistic model is Africa (Klein 2009; McBrearty and Brooks 2000). Although the western Eurasian record is fairly well known (e.g., see reviews by Bar-Yosef 2002; Klein 2009; Mellars 2005), the nature of the spread of modern humans into eastern Asia is still not well understood (Norton and Jin 2009). The picture in eastern Asia is particularly confusing because the genetic, hominin fossil and archaeological records appear to support different dispersal models. For instance, the majority of genetics studies support a model where modern humans dispersed out of Africa sometime after 60 ka, follo
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