Those of you who have had the experience of carrying a fishing nets (or bandu) as a child and catching killifish in a local stream will know that catching fish is not easy. The placenta was a case where all the fish ran away and there were only a few stones in the net when you drove the fish and lifted the footrest as much as possible.

The strategy chosen by mankind in the evolutionary competition for survival was 'Eat Anything'. If you think about it now, it is fortunate that our ancestors entered the omnivorous path. If you had chosen a herbivorous diet, you might have had to pack a bag full of grass and chew it all day long. For humans who chose omnivorous food, clams that could be caught by entering shallow water and reaching out were an attractive ingredient. Shellfish were a great source of nutrition and tasted good.

Among the many theories that explain how our people walked on two feet, there is the so-called “waterside adaptation theory”. In the water that entered to catch this shellfish, it was easier to stand up with straightened waist due to buoyancy, and humans who stood upright with their two feet in the water were walking on land with two feet after a long time, which seems quite plausible.

Anyway, mankind who went into the water to catch shellfish naturally looked to fish as well. The problem is that it is almost impossible to catch fish with your bare hands. But isn't it our humanity's specialty to make the impossible possible? The Paleolithic people, who had mastered the skill of weaving nets, caught fish with fine nets. It is not clear when the nets began to be made, but it seems that the net-like hats and traces of clothes remain on Venus, a famous work of art from the Late Paleolithic period, and it seems that it was possible to make enough fishing nets around 20,000 years or so.

Let's go back to the previous step. At the bottom of the net of the footsteps, a weighty extra pry was run to keep it close to the bottom of the stream. This is the net chu (fish mang chu). When this net comes out of the archaeological site, you can guess that the people who lived there ate fish. An important relic was discovered by an archaeological investigation team at the Yonsei University Museum in Maedun Cave in Jeongseon, Gangwon-do this summer, which was particularly hot. Several points of netting made by placing both ends of a flat cobblestone on top of an anvil stone and knocking it were excavated along with small fish spines. The Paleolithic period is a relic showing that fishing, as well as hunting and gathering, was an important means of livelihood. What is surprising is that the date of this net-chu, as revealed by the investigation team, is a whopping 29,000 years ago in the Late Paleolithic period. It is said to be the oldest in the world among the nets discovered so far.

In fact, if you recall the net hat worn by the Paleolithic Venus "Venus of Willendorf", it is not a surprising date. It is rather surprising that even tens of thousands of years ago, people who had been weaving nets and catching fish lived in this land.

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