National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek tells Host Carolyn Beeler about Suyanggae, South Korea, an archaeological zone with rare and precious relics of the peoples who first arrived there up to 46,000 years ago. He observes that the Stone Age represents about 99% of human history, and most of that unrecorded human experience remains unknown.
National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been on a walking journey since 2013, tracing the footsteps of early human migration from Africa across the planet.
Along the way, he’s been reporting on what he sees in a project called Out of Eden Walk. His latest essay is postmarked in Danyang, South Korea, near an archeological zone with a wealth of Stone Age relics.
Salopek joined The World’s Host Carolyn Beeler to discuss what he learned about the people of the Stone Age and how their tools withstood time and nature.
Carolyn Beeler: So, remind us of the timeline here. How old are Stone Age relics? When was that period?
Paul Salopek: Here in South Korea — it changes around the world, of course, depending on when early Homo sapiens arrived on the scene — But here, these particular stone tools are between 46,000 years and maybe about 10,000 years old. So, quite a span.
If I remember right, the Stone Age came as humans transitioned from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to farming. Which parts of the world had our ancestors reached by this period? Obviously Korea, where you found those tools.
Yeah, I think pretty much what we call today the “Old World,” so it would be Africa, where we originated as a species about 300,000 years ago, a long time ago. And again, just to be clear, because often people get it confused, we’re talking right now about Homo sapiens, right? Our species. People who, if they sat down next to us at a restaurant, we wouldn’t notice any difference at all because it would be anatomically identical, or at least close. So, from 300,000 years ago till only about 11,000 years ago, it was all the Stone Age. And, you know, scientists break it up into different eras. But, basically, that was the Stone Age. As an archeologist told me recently here in Korea, he said, “Paul, if we take into account the length of our species’ time spent in the Stone Age, if we convert it to like one day, one 24-hour period, we spent 23 hours and 55 minutes of our species history in the Stone Age, and only the last five minutes in recorded history.”
It was a long period. And you said humans had reached basically the “Old World” by that period. So, everything but the Americas?
You know, the Americas is still a bit of an enigma. The traditional consensus is that early, anatomically modern Homo sapiens crossed, you know, the Alaskan Siberia land bridge about 12,000 years ago. Some evidence is starting to show that they came even earlier, and it might have been a maritime migration in small, kind of, canoes along the coast, maybe as early as 20,000 years ago. There are these amazing sites in South America where more research is being done.
We’re still learning a lot about this lengthy period in our history. Let’s return to the archeological zone in Danyang. What kinds of tools did you see? What do they look like?
Well, basically, lots of blades, cores. Back then, people made stone tools by taking what’s called a “core,” like a circular rock, and hitting it with a stone hammer — another generally circular rock — knocking off blades. Then, they would microchip those blades to turn them into points, cutters, scrapers or basically whatever you have in your kitchen cabinet to process food. When we go to Stone Age sites, we find that … it’s basically a kitchen, a Stone Age kitchen, with all the tools necessary to break bones, get marrow, strip hides off animals, cut open the big beasts and little beasts, you name it.
What did you learn about the people who made those tools when you were at this archeological zone?
Carolyn, here is one of the amazing things about human history — and it reflects on my project because, as you noted, I’m following the footsteps of these early anatomical, modern people around the world — [which] is that we know very little about them. They discovered the world for us. They traveled in bands of 25 to 40. [They] were hunter-gatherers, as you mentioned. They were women, men, old people, kids. What I like to remind my readers is that family units discovered the world and gave us the world. It wasn’t the mighty explorer, this kind of masculine, you know, patriarchal figure. Even children discovered the world for us. They were masters of surviving on the environment. These stone tools are precision instruments. Basically, they were brilliant at what they did. They weren’t primitive at all.
I gather that the senior archeologists at this site showed you one relic that he said was unlike anything else discovered in Asia. What was it, and what do people think it was used for?
Yeah, very mysterious stone. So, they dug up tens of thousands of stone tools, flakes, points, grinders and choppers. But they found this one remarkable stone. It’s about the size of a human hand. It’s long and elongated. It’s polished. But it has 23 very precisely spaced notches carved into its surface, almost like a ruler. So, the question is, “Is this our first yardstick?” This piece, I think, is between 18,000 and maybe 40,000 years old. It’s really, really, really old. And getting into the heads of the people who made it way back before written history is rather difficult today, right? What are people thinking? What is their imagination doing? What are they dreaming? We can only conjecture about what this was meant for, but I imagined, “God, this is the beginning of measuring out the universe, right?” That led to all this infrastructure I saw around me while walking down this river alley. From concrete superhighways to, you know, the microcomputer on my phone. Maybe it all started near Danyang on this muddy river in Korea.
So, you think a lot about ancient history when you see one of these tools that one of our ancestors would have made out of a rock. What do you reflect on?
Entire systems of knowledge, vast systems of knowledge that were deep and mysterious and highly skilled and multifaceted ass anything we have today … that’s gone. It’s vanished. We just mentioned, Carolyn, earlier that 99.5% of our history was built on stone tool technology. Stone tools carved open ecosystems for us to get energy through, you know, animal protein, to build our brains, to build cultures, to build our cities, eventually. But it’s all gone. How many people know how to make a stone tool today? Nobody, except a few archeologists. When I hold these in my hand, they vibrate with this hidden power of a lost way of life, which was nomadic. It was moving through landscapes like water. Not settled the way we are by agriculture, kind of rooted in place.
I often wonder what our era of history will leave behind for archeologists and how much knowledge in our memory chips and electronics will just be gone when technology has moved on so far that a motherboard is a mysterious object.
You know, I’m sitting in an inexpensive motel in Asia right now, looking around this room as I’m talking to you, And I’m not sure that anything much will survive 40,000 years the way these stone tools in Danyang did.
Parts of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.
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