The Korean Pleistocene Record and its Contextual Characterization

Because of lack of appropriate data, both quantitatively and qualitatively, Korean palaeolithic research has been courting for diverse scientific approaches and accounts. The unbounded emphasis put upon scientific approaches has been far from fruitful and conducive to the methodological advancement of palaeolithic research though; this is wellenough demonstrated by rephrasing the characteristics of the Pleistocene record accumulated and analyzed so far. 1) Critique on the too-simplistic-to-be-true scheme on the formation of five stepwise marine terrace, 2) re-evaluation of flora and plant record that cannot be clearly contextualized with hominin diets and behaviors, 3) deficit of uncontested faunal and paleoanthropological fossil records associated with lithic and other archaeological record, commonly lead to a very rudimentary and naïve synthesis that the majority of Korean Pleistocene record was exclusively formed during the Late Pleistocene. In particular, the exceptionally affluent in-situ proxy data reported from the Chongpadae Cave site, Hwanghae Province, indicates that Korean palaeolithic assemblages including handaxe and modern sapiens fossils were generally formed as of MIS 4

Archaeological record · Archaeology · Cave · Early Pleistocene · Fossil Record · Geography · Homo sapiens · Pleistocene · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · History · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Geology · Paleontology