--- title: The first farms and towns — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The first farms and towns», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: About 12,000 years ago some people stopped following the animals and started planting seeds and keeping animals near home: they became farmers. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / The first farms and towns # The first farms and towns Lesson 2 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/0/) — About 12,000 years ago some people stopped following the animals and started planting seeds and keeping animals near home: they became farmers. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/1/) — Nobody invented farming in one go. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/3/) — Think of a vegetable patch at school: once you plant beans you cannot wander off, you have to stay, water them and guard them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/4/) — Farmers did the same, so they built houses and villages that stayed put. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/5/) — When farms grew more food than the farmers needed, not everyone had to farm. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/6/) — Some people became potters, builders, priests or leaders, and villages grew into towns. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/7/) — Later people learned to melt copper out of rocks and to mix it with tin to make bronze, so historians name these times after the best tool material: the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/9/) — Farming also started separately in China, Mexico, the Andes and other places; it was not invented by one person in one place. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/10/) — Dogs were the first tamed animals, long before farming; sheep, goats, cattle and pigs came later, and horses much later. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/11/) — Farmers built houses of mud brick or wood near their fields and lived in villages all year round. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/12/) — Settled people made pots of baked clay to store grain, water and oil. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/13/) — Çatalhöyük in Turkey was a town about 9,000 years ago with houses so tightly packed that people walked over the roofs and climbed in through holes with ladders. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/14/) — Jericho, near the river Jordan, is one of the oldest towns in the world; over 10,000 years ago its people built a stone wall and a tall tower. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/15/) — Stonehenge in England is a great circle of huge stones raised about 4,500 years ago by farming people using ropes, sledges and wooden rollers. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/16/) — The stones of Stonehenge line up with the sunrise in midsummer and the sunset in midwinter. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/17/) — When farms made more food than needed, some people could have other jobs, such as potter, builder, priest or leader. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/18/) — People learned to melt copper from rocks, and later mixed copper with tin to make bronze, which is harder. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/19/) — Historians name early times after the best tool material: the Stone Age, then the Bronze Age, then the Iron Age. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/20/) — The Ages did not start everywhere at the same time; some places used iron much earlier than others. - ← previous: [The first people: hunters, gatherers and cave painters](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/1-the-first-people/) - next →: [Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)