Pingmaebawi Dolmen

Hwasun County, Korea

Pingmaebawi, literally "toss (pingmae) a stone (bawi)," is also a pun on "give birth;" the legend is that pregnant women, who manage to land a pebble inside the niche, will give birth to sons.

Legends aside, the dolmen is prehistoric but the niche is modern, dating to 1920; its inscription translates as "Min family property." The Min family, who owned the land back then, didn't understand what the stone really was, so they just used it as a boundary marker.

Interestingly, though, modern theory (2016) incorporates a similar interpretation: prehistoric people might well have defined their territory as the space enclosed by the graves of their ancestors, just as the Min family did only a hundred years ago.