Abstract
Star maps are known to have existed in Korea as early as in the Three-Kingdom period, 1st C. BC-10th C. AD. One of these ancient kingdoms, Koguryo (37 BC-668 AD), located in the north, had left important paintings on walls of the royal tombs, which show early groupings of stars into constellations in East Asia. The locations of these tombs are scattered along the Yalu river, now the border between China and North Korea, and in the area nearby Pyongyang, the North Korean capital city. The present survey counted nineteen such tombs. The wall painting of northern Dipper and other stars, as shown in Figure 1, is an example.
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Notes
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Il-Seong, N. (2002). Three Star Maps: Results of the Impact of Western Astronomy on Korean Tradition in the 18th Century. In: Ansari, S.M.R. (eds) History of Oriental Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 275. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9862-0_4
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