Mahan (Korea)
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| Korea at the end of the 1st century BC Chr. |
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| Korean alphabet : | 마한 |
| Hanja : | 馬 韓 |
| Revised Romanization : | Mahan |
| McCune-Reischauer : | Mahan |
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History of Korea to the 10th Century |
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| Prehistoric Korea |
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| Antiquity |
| Proto-three realms |
| Time of the Three Kingdoms |
| Northern and Southern states |
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| Later three realms |
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Mahan ( 마한 ) was one of the three Han "confederations" in the central and southern part of the Korean Peninsula , which together were mentioned as Samhan ("Three Han") in the writing Sanguozhi of the historian Chen Shou (233-297). Besides Mahan, these were Jinhan (Chinhan) ( 친한 ) and Byeonhan (Pyŏnhan) ( 변한 ).
geography
Mahan therefore included the area of the western part of what is now South Korea , south of the Han River. The confederation consisted of 54 tribal units, which varied in size up to 10,000 households and Mahan is said to have had a total of 100,000 households. Based on the assumption that a household had an average of five members in the Bronze Age , one can extrapolate from the more than 500,000 inhabitants that Mahan had at the time of its greatest expansion.
history
The inhabitants were considered natives, differently referred to as Han, Ye or Maek (in other sources also as Han-Ye-Maek), between 2000 BC. BC and the 1st century BC Came from the west via China to the Korean Peninsula.
The land they found was largely fertile. A long tradition of growing grain developed among them. A Chinese script from the 5th century AD shows that in addition to rice, five other crops were grown in Mahan . Of the 22 different types of wood that existed at that time, the residents preferred pine , chestnut and oak for their buildings, with the chestnut later becoming the preferred building material.
In Chinese literature, Mahan's political units were referred to as guo ( Chinese 國 / 国 ). However , historians and archaeologists do not agree on the interpretation of the term guo . Assuming some of the small states that made up Mahan, others see evidence that they may have been individual villages, amalgamations of villages due to consanguinity or clan societies. The latter is considered likely.
In Samguk Sagi , a Korean script from the 12th century, the kingdom of Baekje is said to be in 18 BC. BC and formed from a northern part of Mahan. This would assume that Mahan was born in the 1st century BC. Has already existed. There are, however, different assumptions about its decline. If some interpretations assume that the kingdom of Baekje Mahan captured in AD 369 and thus destroyed the tribal union, which is supported by the Japanese chronicle Nihon Shoki from the 8th century, a group of archaeologists assume based on their excavation data suggests that parts of Mahan in the area around the Yeongsan River must have existed until the 6th century.
literature
- Hyung Il Pai : Construction "Korean" Origins . A Critical Review of Archeology, Historiography, and Radical Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories . Harvard University Asia Center , Cambridge, Massachusetts 2000, ISBN 0-674-00244-X (English).
- Djun Kil Kim : The History of Korea . Greenwood Press , Westport, Connecticut 2005, ISBN 0-313-33296-7 , 2 - Early History .
- Hyun-hee Lee, Sung-soo Park, Nae-hyun Yoon : New History of Korea . Ed .: The Academy of Korean Studies (= Korean Studies Series . No. 30 ). Jimoondang , Paju-si 2005, ISBN 89-88095-85-5 , Chapter 6. Expansion of Early Baekje .
- Michael J. Seth : A Concise History Korea . From the Neolithic Period through the Nineteenth Century . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers , Oxford 2006, ISBN 0-7425-4005-7 (English).
- Gina Lee Barnes : State Formation in Korea . Historical and Archeological Perspectives . Routledge Shorton , London 2006, ISBN 978-0-7007-1323-3 (English).
- Minkoo Kim : Woodland management in the ancient Mahan statelets of Korea: an examination of carbonized and waterlogged wood . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . No. 38 . Elsevier , Amsterdam August 2011, p. 1967–1976 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jas.2011.04.011 (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ Barnes : State Formation in Korea . 2006, p. 27 .
- ^ Seth : A Concise History Korea . 2006, p. 22 .
- ^ Barnes : State Formation in Korea . 2006, p. 28 .
- ^ Pai : Construction "Korean" Origins . 2000, p. 108 ff .
- ↑ D. Kim : The History of Korea . 2005, p. 16 f .
- ↑ a b c d M. Kim : Woodland Management in the ancient Mahan statelets of Korea . 2001, p. 1967 .
- ^ M. Kim : Woodland management in the ancient Mahan statelets of Korea . 2001, p. 1974 .
- ^ Barnes : State Formation in Korea . 2006, p. 29 .
- ^ Lee, Park, Yoon : New History of Korea . 2005, p. 137 .