The stone is beautiful! In 1963, the first verse in Korea's first children's museum school textbook “Stoneware Story,” published in 1963 by Go Cheong Gyeong-Ryeol, the eternal new line, begins with “A stone is beautiful”. With the words beautiful, the teacher expresses the joy that can only be felt by those who have found the sparkling stoneware with their hair meticulously sticking out through the loess. However, the Paleolithic Age is a time of the past too far from us, and the fact that the Paleolithic relics are no different from the randomly rolling stone sculptures, it is not easy to feel the impression that they are relics of prehistoric people. When you start explaining, "This fist ax is really~" politely, "Isn't that just a stone?" That's why it's easy to come back to the booing question.

However, if you take a peek at the fist ax, the representative stone tool of the Paleolithic period, you will think that it is truly beautiful. The almond-shaped fist ax has a balance of left and right symmetry, reminiscent of a well-set water droplet diamond. The fist ax that early humans started making about 1.5 million years ago is close to symmetry in both plane and side. A fist ax with a symmetrical blade is an elaborate stoneware that cannot be made by removing it. It is a stoneware that can only be completed by removing it step by step in the order of work according to the blueprint in the head. Early humans who made fistaxes were able to draw in their minds the blueprint of a fistaxe that was invisible before their eyes. He had the so-called abstract thinking ability. Perhaps that is why the fist ax is very attractive even from the eyes of modern people.

I sometimes do experimental archaeological research where I try to make and use a fist ax of the Paleolithic era, but if I only think about the purpose of skinning and using meat, that is, the function of a stone tool, I have to work hard for a long time like a fist ax to achieve a high level of symmetry. There is no need to make a stoneware that you have. You can slice the meat and peel the bark with just a piece of stone that was roughly removed with one or two blows. So the beautiful symmetry of the fist ax is more interesting. As far as archaeologists know, fistaxes were used to slaughter animals and trim trees.

To remove a fist ax that has a symmetrical beautiful shape, it takes a lot of balls and requires very good skill. Then, why did early humans struggle for a long time to elaborate and elaborate an elaborate fist ax that was like a work of art with a high degree of symmetry? Perhaps it is because human nature is the desire to beautifully decorate the tools we use. Think nicely decorated hunting gun buttboards or camping knives with colorful patterns.

Many Paleolithic scholars believe that artistic thinking had already sprung up in the early humans who began to make a fist ax with a balanced beauty of left and right symmetry. Therefore, in some sense, the fist ax could be said to be the first art object of mankind. That's why stones are beautiful, like the words of Yun Gyeong-ryeol.

There was a buzzword that the uproar at the time of June 25th was not an uproar. Really, there are so many things going on these days that every day is breathtaking. There is no shortage of daily life filled with tension that cannot be seen a step ahead, so if you walk in the city center full of fine dust, there will be times when a sigh of a very painful life will come out. I dare recommend that it be a spring day where you can go to a nearby museum and take a moment to look at the fist ax and say that the stone is so beautiful.

<Copyright(c)2002 GGC All rights reserved.>