Bangudae Petroglyphs
| Bangudae Petroglyphs | |
Bangudae replica
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| Korean name | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | |
| Hanja | |
| Revised Romanization | Bangudae amgakhwa |
| McCune–Reischauer | Pan'gudae amgakhwa |
Korea's National Treasure No. 285, the Bangudae Petroglyphs, are located mainly on flat vertical rock faces around 8m wide and around 5m high on steep cliffs on the riverside of the Daegokcheon stream, a branch of the Taehwa River, which runs eastward and joins the East Sea at Ulsan. The surrounding ten rock faces have a small number of engravings as well. The rocks consist of shale and hornfels oriented toward the north and they shine for a while at sunset. As an overhanging cliff they are in the structure of a rock shelter.
Three hundred and four representations can be seen, of which 166 figures are animals and 108 are unidentified motifs. Representations of cetaceans are the most frequent, being 14.4% of the figures. In terms of theme, the representations are either anthropomorphic, depicting the body or face of a human; zoomorphic, showing sea and land animals; hunting and fishing tools; and indeterminate markings whose themes or shapes are hard to identify.
The engravings of whales and deer were made in most cases by carving out the body, while those of land animals mostly consist of outlines and patterns drawn on the rock surface. Such difference suggest difference in the time of production, given the overlapping relationships of the depictions. At the site, cetaceans are most important, followed by deer and land animals in that order, and there are a small number of turtles, seals, fish, and birds.
The figures are side views of the whole body with a somewhat exaggerated penis or front images of people with mask-like faces spreading their four limbs. There are engravings of people hunting animals with a bow, raising their hands, and playing a long rod like a musical instrument, recalling hunting and religious acts.
Shapes and features enable the species to be discriminated. Most of them are whales and concentrated on the left main rock face. Ungulate mammals like deer and predatory animals like tigers, leopard, and wolves are mainly on the right main rock face. Animals whose species can be identified include large cetaceans such as the northern right whale, the humpback whale, the right whale, the grey whale, and the sperm whale. There are also sea animals such as sea turtles, seal, salmon-like fish; sea birds; and land animals such as red deer, musk deer, roe deer, water deer, tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, racoons, and wild pigs.
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