Population Fluctuation and the Adoption of Food Production in Prehistoric Korea: Using Radiocarbon Dates as a Proxy for Population Change

Abstract

Population growth has been evoked both as a causal factor and consequence of the transition to agriculture. The use of radiocarbon (14C) dates as proxies for population allows for reevaluations of population as a variable in the transition to agriculture. In Korea, numerous rescue excavations during recent decades have offered a wealth of 14C data for this application. A summed probability distribution (SPD) of 14C dates is investigated to reconstruct population trends preceding and following adoptions of food production in prehistoric Korea. Important cultivars were introduced to Korea in two episodes: millets during the Chulmun Period (ca. 6000–1500 BCE) and rice during the Mumun Period (ca. 1500–300 BCE). The SPD suggests that while millet production had little impact on Chulmun populations, a prominent surge in population appears to have followed the introduction of rice. The case in prehistoric Korea demonstrates that the adoption of food production does not lead inevitably towards sustained population growth. Furthermore, the data suggest that the transition towards intensive agriculture need not occur under conditions of population pressure resulting from population growth. Rather, intensive rice farming in prehistoric Korea began during a period of population stagnation.

Millet vs rice: an evaluation of the farming/language dispersal hypothesis in the Korean context

“…Spatial analyses of earlier Mumun settlements also confirm that migration was critically involved in the geographic spread of the early Mumun culture in the region (Kim 2002a). The summed probability density of radiocarbon dates from Korea, which archaeologists now widely employ to infer population dynamics, indicates a population boom starting from the beginning of the Mumun Period around 1300 BCE (roughly 3300 calibrated BP, Figure 2) (Oh et al 2017). Nevertheless, the changes in subsistence economy and material culture and population increase should not simply be assumed to be the result of a conquest of farmers or ethnic replacement.…”

Development and testing scenarios for implementing land use and land cover changes during the Holocene in Earth system model experiments

“…lakes, bogs, forest hollows) are sparse. Site-based reconstructions of land cover are therefore interpolated statistically to produce spatially continuous reconstructions (Nielsen et al, 2012;Pirzamanbein et al, 2014Pirzamanbein et al, , 2018. LandCover6k uses a 1 • resolution grid and all Figure 6.…”

“…There are also time series reconstructions for individual sites outside these two regions (e.g. Nakagawa et al, 2002;Wilmshurst et al, 2007;Ortega-Rosas et al, 2008). Furthermore, the simulated time course of CO 2 emissions can be compared to the ice core records.…”

Development and testing of scenarios for implementing Holocene LULC in Earth System Model Experiments

“…Mathematical simulations show that the method is relatively robust for large sample sizes (Williams, 2012). Radiocarbon dates have been successfully used in several regions to identify population fluctuations associated with the introduction of farming and subsequent changes in farming regimes (Shennan et al, 2013;Zahid et al, 2016;Oh et al, 2017;Freeman et al, 2018) as well as climatic oscillations (Whitehouse et al, 2014;Crema et al, 2016). Figure 3: Reconstruction of changes in population size in the Iberian Peninsula during the Holocene (9000 to 2000 BP, 9ka to 2ka BP) using summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates (data after Balsera et al, 2015).…”