Irrigated paddy fields of the Mumun culture (Okbang)
Arrozales irrigados de la cultura Mumun (Okbang)
- Date
- c. 1300-900 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Okbang, Jinju, South Gyeongsang, South Korea
- Credited to
- Mumun culture farmers
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Paddy fields with terraces, dykes and irrigation channels that show intensive wet-rice farming on the Korean peninsula during the Mumun culture. Okbang and neighbouring sites in Jinju preserve some of the most extensive prehistoric rice fields in East Asia.
Rice and millet grains occur at earlier Korean sites (from c. 3000-2000 BC, mostly dry-field cultivation); irrigated flooded paddies are associated with the Early and Middle Mumun (c. 1500-300 BC). Dates vary from field to field.
What it led to
- surplus that sustained large villages and social hierarchies in the Mumun
- Korea's shift from Neolithic to Bronze Age tied to rice
- agrarian base of the later Gaya and Silla kingdoms