--- title: Olympiad: cause and effect chains ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: cause and effect chains ★★★», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A cause is what makes something happen; an effect is what follows from it. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/) [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/) / Olympiad: cause and effect chains ★★★ # Olympiad: cause and effect chains ★★★ Lesson 86 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/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/0/) — A cause is what makes something happen; an effect is what follows from it. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/1/) — History is full of chains like a line of dominoes: push the first one, and the last one falls far away, years or even centuries later. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/2/) — A chain from the start of the course: farming gave people food they could store, villages grew into cities, rulers had to count grain, animals and taxes, and so writing began in Sumer. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/5/) — Look for how one thing really pushed the next. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/6/) — Trap two: big events rarely have only one cause. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/7/) — The shot in Sarajevo in 1914 was the spark of the First World War, but two rival alliances of big powers were the dry wood waiting for it. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/8/) — Hamish in Aberdeen tells his wee sister: «Dinnae just say what happened, say why, ken» (dinnae means don't, wee means little). - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/9/) — Olympiad puzzles hand you a chain in a muddle: find the first push, then follow each «so...» to the end. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/10/) — Farming let people store food, villages grew into cities, and writing began in Sumer about 5,000 years ago, mostly to keep records of grain, animals and taxes. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/11/) — Roman roads were built so legions could march fast, and the same roads carried traders, the Latin language and later Christianity. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/12/) — The Mongol Empire made the Silk Road safer for traders such as Marco Polo, but trade routes from Asia also helped carry the Black Death towards Europe in the 1340s. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/13/) — The Black Death killed perhaps a third or more of Europe's people; with fewer workers left, survivors could ask for higher wages, and the old serf system weakened in western Europe. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/14/) — Gutenberg's printing press, from around 1450, made books much cheaper; more people learned to read, and new ideas, like Martin Luther's in 1517, spread across Europe within weeks. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/15/) — After 1492 diseases such as smallpox, carried by Europeans, killed very many native people of the Americas, who had never met them before, and this helped the Spanish conquer the Aztecs and the Inca. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/16/) — The first steam engines pumped water out of coal mines; more coal powered factories and railways, people moved to the towns, and crowded, dirty towns suffered from cholera. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/17/) — In 1854 the doctor John Snow mapped cholera cases in a London street and showed they gathered round one water pump; after the «Great Stink» of the Thames in 1858, London built big new sewers. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/18/) — Railways needed timetables, so from the 1840s British railways used London time everywhere, and towns gave up their own local clock times. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/19/) — Britain bought lots of tea from China and paid in silver; British traders then sold the harmful drug opium in China to get silver back, China banned it, and the Opium War of 1839–1842 ended with Hong Kong going to Britain. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/86-olympiad-cause-and-effect-chains/21/) — The Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957 shocked the United States, which set up NASA in 1958 and raced the Soviet Union to the Moon, landing there in 1969. - ← previous: [Olympiad: timelines, centuries and which came first ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/85-olympiad-timelines-centuries-and-which-came-first/) - next →: [Olympiad: spot the anachronism ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/87-olympiad-spot-the-anachronism/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)