A major issue in pinpointing the origins of peoples that arises in various studies of histories is the supposed ethnic character of progenitors. This has become a factor in contentious debates regarding origins in not just Korean history, but also the history of many other peoples seeking to develop a unifying national identity. Defining origins with modern terminology becomes a problematic issue as there is no clear evidence of a definitive ethnic groups that can be equated with present-day ethnic groups. It is not known whether or not prehistoric peoples or even peoples of early state societies identified themselves according to a particular ethnic group. The complicated issue of identity blurs and can at times skewer the possible answers to the questions of beginnings.
In searching for origins, one returns to the question of what exactly does the term "Korean" mean and how far can this term be taken. That Koreans have been a highly homogenous people and that their culture and language has been relatively homogenous throughout much of their recorded history is indesputable; when reaching back further into antiquity, however, the picture becomes far murkier. The Korean peninsula and the areas within the sphere of Korean history, which include parts of present-day Manchuria, were peopled by a variety of peoples that appear to have engaged in significant contact or migrations and intermingling. While modern Northeast Asians strive to search for a definitive ethnic group in searching for origins, overlaps between the tribes of present-day Manchuria, the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese archipelago may have been commonplace.
Human activity on the Korean peninsula has occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, but the earliest pre-cursors of what could possibly be called "Korean" culture and civilization go back to around the sixth millennium BCE to the second millennium BCE.
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