Jeongok Paleolithic Festival

Let me tell you about the cool Paleolithic festival that I went to during my Children’s Day weekend up in Seoul.  It was up in Jeongok which was about an hour and a half drive north of Seoul.  We knew we were getting close when we drove under this really cool archway. It had cavemen, a woolly mammoth, and a saber tooth tiger on it.

Once we got to the festival the first place we went to was the Paleolithic museum. When we finally found it I was surprised how futuristic it looked. It was all silver, shiny and curvy. Even on the inside it everything had curves to it and looked like it was a museum from the future. I thought this was strange since it was a museum that was about evolution, the history of humans, and had a lot of really old things in it. My dad called it ironic.

That cool looking silver thing is the museum.

This was the center lobby area. It looked like a lounge from a spaceship.

This was the main exhibition area.

The museum was really interesting. I learned that there were many human like creatures that walked on their feet like us that lived for a long time before humans like us evolved. They were kind of ugly. One of the cool features of the museum was that when you got there you got a card that you can use to set up a photo of yourself on a computer. Then when you went around the museum you could scan your card and then morph your picture to see what you would look like as different species of our human ancestors, such as Australopithecus (Lucy), Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Neanderthal. It was really funny to see what my mommy, daddy, and I would look like as these different species. I also learned about evolution, archeology, cave paintings, Stone Age tool making, ancient musical instruments, and saw a really cool replica of a mammoth bone hut.

The first pic is me, then me as a Australopithecus, then me as a Homo erectus,
next is me as a Neanderthal, and finally me as a primitive Homo sapiens.

This was the really cool mammoth bone hut. It would have been
so cool to live in one of these.

After we were done with the museum we headed back out to the festival grounds. I got to try out a bunch of old traditional Korean farm tools that were used to get rice off the shaft, grind it, pound it, and then carry the loads of hay. Then I got to play some old games. And then I got to play with some big grubs. They were freaky looking, but I was tough and pick a couple up and played with them.

This was really heavy but I make it look easy :)

Yummy Grubs!!!

Then we found an area that had a bunch of cool sculptures, and another area that was full of pretty purple flowers. So of course we took a bunch of pictures.

After the sun went down we stayed and watched the closing ceremony concert. There was a bunch of performances. There was modern pop, an older style Korean pop, hip hop, and rock. There were TV cameras everywhere because it was being recorded for TV. After all the music was done there was a really cool but short firework show.

Not sure who these guys were, but the crowd got really excited when they came on.
My dad's students told him that they were really popular.

Yay Fireworks!!!

It is pretty north and close to the DMZ, but if you get the chance to go to Jeongok I highly recommend going to the Paleolithic museum there. And if you can make it up there for next years festival you will have a great time. 

Click me for some info about the museum. 

Click on the slideshow below to see the full album that includes more pictures of the festival.