Chungbuk Monument No. 102, Archaeological Site in Geumgul Cave, Danyang

The cave is 80 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 9 meters high. Cultural layers of the Paleolithic, Middle and Late Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age have been layered on top of each other, and fossils of stone tools, bone industries, earthenware, and conch shells, as well as fossils of hunted animal bones, conch shells, and earthenware fragments have been excavated, allowing us to see their food, life, and natural environment. The Homo erectus, who lived at the bottom layer from about 700,000 years ago, made curved inner and outer blade hand axes, choppers, and scrapers, showing that they lived by hunting animals.
Later, after the flood, they lived in the warmer climate of the interglacial period, hunting woolly rhinoceros, brown bear, cow, sika deer, and horse. They made many throwing stone tools, and they hunted with hand axes, choppers, cutters, and scrapers. Then came a severe cold season, and the cave ceilings swelled and collapsed, leaving them uninhabited for a time. A long time later, an interglacial period returned, and the warmer climate allowed them to live on the cave floor, which was higher than before. As macaques and rhinoceroses became more common, and brown bears and deer, which lived in cooler climates, increased, so did hunting techniques, and stone tools such as grooved blades, cutters, hand axes, and scrapers were made. Since they hunted many animals, there were many animal fossils and stone tools. The method of making stone tools became more advanced, and the number of stone tools made by the levallois method increased. It can be seen that they were entering the period of Homo sapiens sapiens as they made flaked hand axes, grooved blades, flaked cutters, saw blades, and scrapers.
After that, the Homo sapiens sapiens achieved a culture of smaller but sharper stone blades with the developed method of indirect flaking, and stone tools such as scrapes, end-scrapes, scrapers, and burins made of stone blade flakes were also made and used. On the other hand, by using anvil flaking to break off round, thin, small plank-like stones, they came to create crescent flakes, which are unique to Geumgul Cave. The stone edge flake, stone edge scraper, and stone edge cutter by the indirect flaking technique are the creations of the Homo sapiens sapiens, but they are a further development of the stone technology of the Homo sapiens. It can be seen that they lived in the Late Paleolithic for a short period of time in the next thin layer of the cave.
The stone tools of the Homo sapiens sapiens were light and small but were sharp. The next cultural layer of the Mesolithic has even thinner tools and is dominated by chipped stone tools. They used chipped stone tools to eat fish and shellfish from the rivers. In the next Neolithic period, they made patterned pottery, carved fish images on shells, and wore shell bracelets. The remains of earthenware sherds, shells, and conch bones are found in the fire pits they used, and the carved comb patterns are similar to those in Amsadong, of the Hangang River downstream. The earthenware on the top floor has holes drilled into the unpatterned shards to create a spinning wheel, indicating that they spun thread to weave cloth and make clothes. Meanwhile, the grinding stones were probably used to cut and chisel down trees and make poles.

- Designated Date: December 30, 1994