About the characteristics and origin of the propeller-shaped bits on the Eurasian continent

In Korea, the question of the origin of propeller-shaped bits is the controversial one, because it was these bits that appeared on the Korean Peninsula before all the others. Propeller-shaped bits are used in such vast territories as the Korean Peninsula, China, and areas of the south of Lake Baikal, in the Altai, and west to the Dnieper River region to north of the Black Sea. In this paper the situation in which propeller-shaped bits were discovered in each region is examined, their morphological features are studied. The author of this work paid special attention to the shape of the ends of the blade and the shape of the blade itself of propeller-shaped bits. Blades with a sharp end and an end that ends with a line are highlighted. The shape of the blade itself also played a major role in classification. The situation of the regional distribution of propeller-shaped bits showed that they have quite strong regional features. For example, propeller-shaped bits of type I of the group A, types I and II of the groups В-1 and В-2 were found only to the west of the Caspian Sea, namely in the areas of the middle reaches of the Don and the lower reaches of the Volga, in the Kuban region of the North Caucasus, and in the areas of the Dnieper River. It has been confirmed that propeller-shaped bits of type III of the group A and type Ⅷ of the group В-1 are characteristic exclusively for the Korean Peninsula. Propeller-shaped bits already at the end of the 6th century BC began to be used in the Kuban region, and in the 5th century BC they are used in the areas of the Dnieper River and in the areas of the Don-Volga rivers. They were used in the Pazyryk culture of Altai, which dates back to the 6th-3rd centuries BC. We can find their original form in bits with three holes from the Boytygem-2 burial ground in Altai, that date back to the 8-7th centuries BC or the end of the 7th and beginning of the 6th centuries BC. Bits similar to the propeller-shaped ones from Korea were found in the Yaloman-2 burial ground of the Hunnu era in Altai, in the Dyrestuisky burial ground in the south of Lake Baikal of the Xiongnu era, in the Yanxiadu monument of the Zhangguo era, and in the Xichagou burial ground of Xifeng county of the Buyeo (Fuyu) time. In general, it can be assumed that propeller-shaped bits that appeared in Altai, on the one hand, are distributed towards Yansiadu, and on the other hand, towards the region south of Lake Baikal and the Xifeng-Yushu regions. Apparently, the propeller-shaped bits from the Korean Peninsula are closely related to the same bits from the Xichagou burial ground of Xifeng, because they are close in both distance and time. However, it is possible that the origin of propeller-shaped bits with a sharp end of the blade is the North Caucasus.