Neolithic Age (Korean Peninsula)

From about 8000 BCE people used polished stone tools and pottery, began farming and settled in pit houses along rivers and coasts.

People ground stone into polished tools (stone hoes, plowshares and sickles, and querns for grinding grain) and made pottery to store and cook food. Early plain pottery and appliqué-decorated pottery came first; comb-pattern pottery later spread across the peninsula. Alongside hunting and fishing they began growing millets; carbonized millet has been found at Jitap-ri in Bongsan and Namgyeong in Pyongyang. Spindle whorls and bone needles were used to make clothes and nets.

Houses were half-sunken pit dwellings with round or round-cornered square floors and a hearth in the middle. Clans formed tribes and married outside the clan; society was egalitarian.

Beliefs included animism (spirits in nature), shamanism (shamans linking gods and people), totemism (an animal as tribal ancestor) and worship of souls and ancestors. Key sites are Amsa-dong in Seoul, Osan-ri in Yangyang and Dongsam-dong in Busan, known for a shell mask.