--- title: How we got here: the big steps on one long timeline — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «How we got here: the big steps on one long timeline», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Leo, in his strategy game: «lol my tribe invented farming on turn 5, ez». --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/) [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/) / How we got here: the big steps on one… # How we got here: the big steps on one long timeline Lesson 61 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 23 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/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/0/) — Leo, in his strategy game: «lol my tribe invented farming on turn 5, ez». - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/1/) — His big sister: «Turn 5? - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/2/) — Bruv, real people waited about 290,000 years.» (Bruv is London slang for brother or mate.) - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/3/) — What really happened: people like us have lived for about 300,000 years, and farming began only about 12,000 years ago. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/4/) — For almost all of human time everyone hunted animals and gathered plants, nuts and berries. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/5/) — Miss Okafor squeezes all human time into one school day from midnight to midnight: farming starts a bit before 11 at night, writing at about 11:35, printing in Europe under three minutes before midnight, and electric light at home in the very last minute. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/7/) — Nobody invented fire, farming began in several lands on its own, and the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages are labels historians made, not days when everyone upgraded together like in a game. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/8/) — And history does not only go up. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/9/) — Ethan's mate says one caveman rubbed two sticks and boom, fire; Ethan says «sus», meaning suspicious. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/11/) — Both are right to doubt. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/12/) — People like us have lived for about 300,000 years; farming began only about 12,000 years ago, first in the Middle East. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/13/) — If all human time were one day, writing would appear at about 11:35 at night and electric light at home in the last minute. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/14/) — Homes got telephones during the 1900s and TV mostly from the 1950s; the World Wide Web was made in 1991, and most homes in rich countries got the internet around 2000. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/15/) — Nobody invented fire: it existed in lightning and wildfires; earlier kinds of humans learned to keep it maybe a million years ago, and regular campfires go back about 400,000 years. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/16/) — Nobody knows exactly when people began to talk; many scientists think full language is at least 100,000 years old, and it is still argued about. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/17/) — The first farmers were often shorter, had worse teeth and caught more illnesses than hunters, but farming fed many more people from the same land. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/18/) — Farming began separately in several places: wheat in the Middle East, rice in China, maize in Mexico, potatoes in the Andes, bananas and taro in New Guinea, sorghum in Africa. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/19/) — Bronze came into use in the Middle East about 5,000 years ago and iron about 3,200 years ago, but at very different times elsewhere; some peoples went straight from stone to iron. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/20/) — Our year numbers count from the birth of Jesus, worked out by a monk called Dionysius around the year 525; years before it count backwards, and BCE and CE mean the same as BC and AD. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/21/) — Chinese, Islamic and Jewish calendars count years differently, and they are just as real. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/22/) — Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, so no human ever met a dinosaur. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/23/) — About 12,000 years ago there were only a few million people; about one billion by 1800 and more than eight billion today. - [24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/61-how-we-got-here-the-big-steps-on-one-long-timeline/24/) — Progress is not a straight climb: after the western Roman Empire broke up, towns in western Europe shrank for centuries, while cities in China and the Islamic world grew. - ← previous: [China: Mei's exaggerations and everyday China](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/60-china-mei-s-exaggerations-and-everyday-china/) - next →: [Everyday inventions: pots, boats, wheels, horses, clocks and glasses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/62-everyday-inventions-pots-boats-wheels-horses-clocks-and-glasses/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)