An Ethno-Archaeological Perspective on
　a "Giant Fish" in the History of Qin Dynasty
Written by Sima Qian of the Western Han

A rock engraving at Ban-gu Dae gives evident proof of prehistoric whaling, which tradition, however, scarcely has continued in Korea. Two descriptions suggestively supply reasons for it: 1) the Japanese legend that Xu Fu introduced whaling into Japan at Kumano on the Kii Peninsula during the Qin dynasty in China, equivalent to the Early Yayoi period in Japan, which covers the estimated period of the whaling engraving at Ban-gu Dae, 2) a description in relation to Xu Fu about the year of the Qin Emperor Shi's death (210 BC) in the dynastical history of Shi Ji written by Sima Qian. The latter description was composed of three parts; firstly, Xu Fu used the pretext of a "giant shark" blocking the passage for his difficulty to get an elixir of life for the Emperor; secondly, hearing that the Emperor had dreamed of fighting with a sea-god, a diviner advised him to eliminate a "large fish" or a "shark dragon" signifying an unlucky omen; lastly, though the Emperor, going up north of Shantung Peninsula from Langxie to Lungcheng-shan, could not find a "large fish", he finally found a "giant fish" at Zhifu, and then killed it by shooting. The author himself does not regard the large or giant fish as a shark or a shark dragon. His description has a historically objective style. From the ethno-archaeological viewpoint, I gather that there was no whaling culture in the region at that time, though there is a high possibility that the "large fish" or "giant fish" was a cetacean.