Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

relaxed, Göbekli, pillars, miscalculation, generations, increased, gruel, 9000, spiritual, 2500, sedentary, choices, improve, temples, wheat, single, luxuries

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the agricultural revolution occurred very gradually

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a collection of attempts to               improve life resulted in a more difficult life for most humans

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why did humans make these               choices to make their lives more difficult

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it was a                             miscalculation, as in other times in history

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they were unable to foresee the full consequences of their choices

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every time they decided to do extra work, e.g. to carry water from the river into the wheat fields, they reasoned that doing this would bring about a better life, e.g. the harvest will be more plentiful

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the basic rule: if you work harder, you will have a better life for you and your children

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they did work harder but in general, life was not easier or safer for humans

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the number of children                   increased (hunter-gatherer women tended to have a child once the previous child was able to walk, i.e. every three years)

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they had more food, but they will have more people to feed

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feeding children with more porridge and           gruel instead of mother's milk would make them weaker and more sickly

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increasing their dependence on a             single source of food like wheat, they increase the risk when calamities strike such a droughts

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stockpiling food such as wheat grain tempted enemies to invade

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even in good years, they will have to build walls, guard cities, and fight wars

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why did humans not abandon this plan?

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because it took                       generations to realize this, and by then, nobody ever really remembered how they use to live as hunters and gathers, most stories passed down were of the nature, "we use to have far less food"

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there were too many people to go back to a hunter-gatherer life, people would starve if they went back to hunting and gathering

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in this way, humans became trapped in a worse way of life

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like a college student who wants to be a musician but decided to study computers in order to make money and retire at 30, there are unforeseen factors that arise

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even if it works, you then have obligations and habits which prevent you from going back to your dream

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this is what happened to our peasants ancestors

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history has few laws which are always true, but one of the laws which is mostly true is that                 luxuries tend to become necessities

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once people get used to a certain habit or luxury, they begin to count on it and take it for granted, and eventually they reach the position where they can't live without it

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today we create devices to make our lives more               relaxed, mostly we think they make our life easy

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e.g. before e-mails it was difficult, expensive and slow to write to someone, now with e-mails we can do this within minutes

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but do we live a more relaxed life because of the invention of e-mails? in many cases, the answer it ironically no

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yes, e-mails make writing easier but the life of writing emails is not easier and more relaxed

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there are some people who don't use e-mail, and if you went back 10,000 years ago, you would find that not all bands had given up their forager life, but the agricultural revolution required only one group of humans for it to eventually spread to the rest

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since farming creating the conditions for growth of populations (                  sedentary mothers who could have a baby each year)

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also when it came to conflict, peasants and farmers would almost always win over foragers since their sheer number

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so once the move to agriculture started, the life of hunters and foragers was reduced incident by incident, year by year

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the move to agriculture was a luxury trap that carried with it important lessons for humanity: that the search and constant progression towards an easier life releases forces of change that transform the world in ways that nobody could foresee and in ways that we ultimately may not find desirable.

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History is full of series of decisions that fulfill short-term needs and desires but ultimately lead to large, unforeseen and undesirable results.

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alternative explanation to the agricultural revolution

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what brought about the agricultural revolution was not a search for a new life, but a                   spiritual aspiration

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perhaps they were aware of the sacrifices of becoming peasants and farmers

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archeologists have discovered an interesting site which gives credit to this theory

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                        Göbekli Tepe

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in lowest stratum, they didn't discover houses but monumental structures with huge               pillars decorated with engravings

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stone pillars covered with animals and creatures

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similar to Stone Henge

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dates to about         2500 B.C. and was built by a developed agricultural society

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Göbekli Tepe, on the other hand, is dated to         9000 B.C. and evidence suggests that those who created it were not farmers but hunter/gatherers

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it suggests that the skills of hunter/gathers was more developed than suspected

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why would a hunter/gathers build such structures

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cultural or religious purpose

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they believed in these cultural or religious system enough to dedicate hundreds of thousands of manhours to build these structures

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another discovery at Göbekli Tepe

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it is very likely that the cultural center at Göbekli Tepe was connected to the cultivation of           wheat, i.e. in order to feed the large number of people who built Göbekli Tepe, it was necessary to find a food source that would feed them all, and hence the cultivation of wheat

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we usually think that villages come before               temples, that pioneers first build a village, and when the village is properous enough they set up a temple

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but archeological site of Göbekli Tepe suggests that the temple was built first and villages only later grew around it

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and that the initial reason for agriculture was for a cultural or religious purpose, and not for an economic purpose

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even if a strong connection between cultural/religious motives and the agricultural revolution is found, it doesn't explain the move to agriculture in other parts of the world such as North and South America

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but it will prove that cultural and religion could have played a part in the agricultural revolution