Keepers of the Fire
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Long, long ago, people first came to live on the Korean Peninsula. Through those long ages without writing, kingdoms or farming, they survived by chipping stone into tools and keeping their fire alive. This story begins with a single stone they left behind.
Characters
A sharp-eyed child
with stone
keeper of the fire
recognized a hand axe
by the Hantan in 1978
1978, by the Hantan River in Yeoncheon. On his day off, an American soldier was strolling along the riverbank with his girlfriend.
look at this stone.
a rock?
stone on purpose.
A stone given an edge by striking flakes from both faces in turn. It was a hand axe, made by people hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Until then, scholars around the world believed this:
There are no hand axes
in East Asia.
In the 1940s, the American archaeologist Movius drew this line on the map. People east of it, he argued, used only crude choppers.
But in 1978, a single stone from the Hantan River shook that belief.
Who was the last person to hold this stone?
What did they look like, what did they eat, how did they spend their nights?
Let’s go back in time
to meet them.
People began living on the Korean Peninsula about 700,000 years ago.
The people we are about to meet came long after that: a small band roaming the banks of the Hantan River.
HawkeyeI’m Hawkeye. No one in our band sees farther than I do.
We never stay in one place. We walk where the deer herds go and where the fruit ripens.
We settled on a hill by the river. The grown-ups wove branches together and covered them with hides, and soon a shelter stood.
I’ll mind the fire.
Listen for where it wants to split.
When Uncle Big Hand struck the stone with another stone, a flake broke away and left a sharp edge.
It broke again.
Again!
I made it myself!
what the stone says, too.
Stone shaped by striking and flaking: chipped stone tools. Paleolithic people always had stones like this in hand.
The hunt doesn’t always go well. What fills our bellies more often is the forest Granny knows.
this one too?
The prettier the color, the more careful you must be.
Dawn. Through the mist, a deer raises its head.
a deer.
Keep the wind at your back. Slowly.
No one hunts alone. Someone drives the game, someone waits, and everyone throws together.
Just then, the reeds parted.
In those days, animals that no longer exist lived on the Korean Peninsula.
Never go after that beast.
That evening, the whole band laughed.
We have meat today!
The meat is shared equally: by the one who caught the most, by Granny who couldn’t hunt, and by the little ones.
No one gives orders in our band. We listen to the elders who know the most, and we all work together. That’s all.
Nothing of a deer goes to waste. The meat is dried, the marrow sucked out, and the antlers and bones become tools.
or the hide will rot.
Well-dried hides become clothing, bedding, and the roofs of our shelters.
When the sun goes down, the cold bares its teeth. But we have fire.
Fire is our life.
In the middle of the night, a blizzard swept into the cave.
the fire’s going out!
quickly.
Just then, a huge shadow appeared at the mouth of the cave.
The bear backed away from the firelight. That day I learned that fire gives us more than warmth.
The years went by.
I grew up and became a hunter, and Granny grew very old.
One winter, Granny could no longer get up.
you must keep it.
That winter, Granny set out on the long journey. Now I am the one who keeps the fire.
On the morning we leave for new land, I place the embers wrapped in moss into a child’s two hands.
Fire is our life.
The words Granny once said to me, I now pass on to the child.
We set out on the road again, following the deer herds and the ripening fruit.
At the hearth, one worn-out hand axe was left behind.
And so countless generations passed.
Cold times and warm times came and went again and again,
and people’s stones grew ever smaller and sharper.
A night at Suyanggae on the Namhan River. Someone was carving lines into a stone, one at a time.
What they were counting, we may never know.
About 20,000 years ago, at the coldest point of the Ice Age.
The sea was more than 100 meters lower than today. The floor of today’s Yellow Sea was a vast plain.
you’ll reach a great land.
About 10,000 years ago, the long Ice Age ended. As the ice melted, the sea rose.
all of that was grassland.
coming up.
Fire is our life.
The sea swallowed the plain. The Yellow Sea was born, and the Korean Peninsula began to take on the shape it has today.
As the cold retreated, forests grew thick and the rivers teemed with fish.
People’s lives, too, were getting ready to change.
One day, someone shaped mud from the riverbank and put it in the fire.
A new age was coming.
1978, by the Hantan River. A stone that had lain buried for hundreds of thousands of years was held in a human hand once more.
The Paleolithic Age, lasting nearly 700,000 years,
made up almost 99 percent of the time
people have lived on the Korean Peninsula.
Through those long ages without writing, kingdoms or farming, people survived by chipping stone and keeping their fire alive.
