Environment and Culture of the Neolithic East Coast of the Korean Peninsula: Focusing on the Early Neolithic in the Yeongdong Region

The Neolithic period in the Yeongdong region has a long hiatus between 4,500 and 3,600 cal BC. The hiatus of about a millennium is thought to be the result of a drying climate and shortlived cold spells that prevented the environment from recovering from damage. However, even if the environmental degradation was severe, it is difficult to understand how human activity could have stopped for such a long period of time. Furthermore, this period was climatically optimal, so it is unlikely that food resources in the region were significantly reduced. To address these questions, I propose the hypothesis that the increase in sea temperatures during the climatic maximum resulted in a mass migration of Neolithic humans, whose primary food source was cold-water fish, northward along the original food source rather than searching for alternative sources. The remaining Neolithic populations likely adapted to the changed environment by reducing group size and increasing mobility, resulting in simplified technological systems and little use of pottery, which is a burden for mobility. In conclusion, this hiatus is likely the result of these choices and the lack of archaeological evidence of their presence. This is an inference based on ethnographic data, as there is no direct evidence, but it is a reasonable hypothesis to explain the nearly millennia-long hiatus in the Neolithic in the Yeongdong region.