The Scientific Method

https://youtu.be/SMGRe824kak

The scientific method is about ordinary people doing ordinary things. That includes you, me,
and other scientists in the world. The scientific method is just a process or steps taken to
produce reliable results to answer a specific question.

Maybe you think you don't use a scientific method in your life, but I can guarantee that you do.
For example, imagine you wake up on a Saturday and you couldn't find your cell phone. That's
an observation. Then you do a little research by thinking about the last time you had it. You
suspect that it might be in the pocket of your pants yesterday. That's a hypothesis. And when
you check your pants, you're doing an experiment!

But science in life don't always go as planned, and you find no cell phone in your pants’ pocket.
So, the second observation leads you to think again and recall what else you did yesterday. You
remember that you put your cell phone in your backpack during school, so you decide it must
be there, and you go and check. And lo! There it is! Life can continue, and you're so happy that
you share the results with your best friend, and explain why it took you so long to text them
back.

Science.

These are the steps of the scientific method. And at any step you can go back and repeat the
process. Typically, after you conduct an experiment and conclude that your results aren't
answering the question, you go back and try something else. And really truly, observations and
research are going on the entire time. Science is a continually ongoing process.

Now let's break down each of these steps into their component parts. All that can be observed
with the five senses are included in observations. You use your sense of smell, sight, taste,
touch, and hearing to make your observations in science. Research is an important step in
science because it may answer other questions you have and help refine your experiment, before
you go down a path that leads to nowhere, or conduct an experiment that's already been done.
Make sure you use reliable sources to learn background information. Scientific journals and
online sources that are vetted and trusted are best. Avoid information from blogs and out-of-date
textbooks, as the information might not be reliable.

Once you have your research completed, you can form your hypothesis, which is a prediction of
what you believe will occur. It is often seen as an if-then statement and is very specific. Here's
an example:

If gummy bears are placed in water for 24 hours, then they will swell to over twice their
original size.

It has an "if" and "then" and uses specific terms that make this experiment repeatable.

The experiment itself is made of several parts. Most experiments collect two types of data:
qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data relies on descriptions like soft, yellow, shiny, or
wet. Quantitative data relies on numbers like 25 centimeters or 2.3 grams. Once you know what
types of data you're going to collect, you can define the variables in your experiment. There is
the independent variable, which is the thing you change to see how it affects your dependent
variable, which is the thing you measure.
So, in the gummy bear example, the change in the experiment is that the gummy bears are being
placed in water. The dependent variable is the volume of the gummy bear, which is measured
before and after it's soaked in the water.

A valid experiment will have both an experimental group, where the independent variable is
altered, and a control group, which can be used to compare the experimental group to the
normal or unaltered version.

In the gummy bear experiment the bears placed in water are the experimental group and the dry
gummy bears are the control, because that's how gummy bears normally are.

So, to summarize, an experiment should have an experimental group and a control group. The
experimental group will have an independent variable and a dependent variable. The data that is
measured and collected can be qualitative, quantitative or both.
The Times and Troubles of the Scientific Method
https://youtu.be/i8wi0QnYN6s

Science isn't like… Science is more of a process. A process of learning about the universe and
organizing that information so that we can build on it. And just like most processes, there's an
accepted way of doing scientific investigations. On everything from the movement of atoms to
the mating habits of tree frogs. This technique is called the scientific method. And it's got its
rules, just like golf and the US postal system.

As much as we take the scientific method for granted, the fact is that it took thousands of years
for us to figure out how to actually practice the discipline of science. And it served us pretty
well. A lot of what we know about the world has been discovered and tested and verified
through the use of the scientific method, or at least versions of the one that we use today.

But of course, not all scientific knowledge has come to us through this method. Many
revelations came about because of flashes of inspiration or just plain luck, rather than by testing
theories and labs. What's more, some experts say that the scientific method can only take us so
far, that we as a species, have reached a level of understanding that requires new methods to
help us get to the finer truths of how the universe works.

So, I have news for you. The scientific method is not perfect, but it's the best thing we have for
now.

The scientific method is all about coming up with a plausible explanation for an observed
phenomenon, and then shooting that possible explanation with the machine gun full of facts and
questions until you either: A) destroy that seemingly plausible explanation or B) decide that it's
indestructible. So, science is working tirelessly night and day to disprove its own theories about
how the world works. Or at least that's what science thinks it's doing.

When you want to find out something about the natural world for example? Why your dog
is always dragging his butt across the floor. A scientist will advise you to go through a series of
steps to find the
answer.
Step 1: Ask a question. Why is my dog always dragging his butt across the carpet?
Step 2: Do some research. Checking out the pet health websites, asking other people why they
think their dogs wiped their anuses on the carpet.
Step 3: Propose a possible but testable explanation, aka a hypothesis. In this case, maybe he has
worms.
Step 4: Test this hypothesis with experiments, until you've disproven, like put his poop butt on a
microscope and see if there's worms under there. Give him some deworming medicine and see
if he stops soiling all the floors in your house. That's called collecting data. If he doesn't stop
after you've dewormed him, you can probably consider that hypothesis disproven. So then, you
come up with another hypothesis and collect some more data. On that each time, you prove an
idea wrong, you come up with another hypothesis, and test until…
Step 5: Your dog quits wiping its butt all over the carpet. And then you can analyze the data you
collected to draw a conclusion. Like, he was just trying to express a blocked anal gland, or he's
just a bit of a perv, or whatever your data suggests. And there you go, science accomplished!
You can go ahead and make your conclusions known to the scientific community now because
you just did the scientific method.

All this sounds pretty reasonable, because that's what we're used to. But that doesn't mean that
science was always done this way. Some people credit Aristotle with inventing the scientific
method, because he was the first to say, hey, truths about natural phenomena can't be discovered
just by thinking really hard on your couch. You have to go experiments, like go out there and
make some observations. Aristotle basically came up with the prototype for the scientific
method. But by present-day standards, he was sort of a terrible scientist. We know that because
almost all of the stuff he wrote about was wrong. Like that time he said that females were
anatomically just deformed men. Yeah.

But his idea that theories could only be proven through experimentation and observation called
empiricism eventually took hold. The problem was that empiricism was really most useful when
lots of people were gathering data and sharing that information. This meant that science could
only grow as fast as information could spread. And back in the days before the Google machine
or the Pony Express or whatever, information spread like snails on NyQuil. Slowly is what I'm
trying to say. Like we think of the Middle Ages as being a time when everybody just sat around
getting the plague and watching the Roman Empire collapsed, but in fact the dark ages of
European science were actually the Golden Age of Arabic science. Muslim scholars preserved
the knowledge that had made its way from ancient Greece, and built upon it while the
Europeans were mostly on intellectual hiatus. In fact, if you want to call somebody the father of
the scientific method, the best candidate would probably be 10th century Arab scientist Ibn al-
Haytham.

Ibn al-Haytham did amazing work on light and optics, a topic on which he wrote seven books.
He used math to prove that we see light that enters our eyes and not because light comes out of
our eyes, which was the prevailing theory of the day. He also developed a method for his
inquiries that was based on: first, gathering data through observation and measurement,
followed by formulating and testing hypotheses to explain what he observed. Basically, he
invented a stripped-down version of what we roll with today.

By the time Europeans were back in the game intellectually, a few key figures in Europe took
the mantle of empiricism and fueled the Scientific Revolution, a period between the 16th and
18th centuries when finally, the scientific method had been refined to a point where actual stuff
could get figured out. This was Science’s first real heyday. Galileo studied astronomy and
physics. Robert Boyle argued that it didn't matter how you felt about a theory or how beautiful
it sounded but only whether it could be backed up by experimentation. Francis Bacon argued
that science was only science if it was trying to prove itself wrong. And the Portuguese
physician and philosopher Francisco Sanchez coined the term scientific method in 1581 to
describe the process of gathering and judging data in an attempt to understand the world. But
arguably, this centuries-long revolution peaked with Isaac Newton. His laws of motion and
gravitation totally changed the game obviously. But in his famous book Principia, he also laid
out what basically became the official rules for scientific reason. Rules like all things that create
the same effects can be assumed to have the same basic causes, and if you observe the same
qualities in different bodies through experimentation, you could assume that all bodies
everywhere have those same qualities. And last but not least theories, based on observation
should be considered accurate until they are refuted by other observations.

So, the Scientific Revolution made the scientific method pretty much what we know today. And
as a result, scientists gradually just started being scientists, not knights who happened to write
books, or monks who did genetics on the side. They also began following specialized
disciplines like chemistry or biology. But here's the weird part. Even though great science was
being done using the scientific method, a lot of incredible discoveries were made without it.
Take Marie Curie's insights into radioactivity, Albert Einstein's theories of special and general
relativity, Nikola Tesla's AC induction motor, Alan Turing in the computer, and Richard
Feynman's famous Feynman diagrams. All these scientists made discoveries either as a result of
putting together pieces that had been discovered by others, or just because they saw the world a
little differently than everybody else. In other words, those discoveries were made not through
subjecting an idea to the method but by creativity and a certain amount of serendipity: both
concepts that would have made old-school empiricists kind of uncomfortable.

By the 20th century, scientists were beginning to find that the scientific method wasn't really
applicable to some of the problems that we were trying to solve. By that time, scientists weren't
trying to figure out where babies came from like Aristotle was, or what made apples fall from
trees. They were trying to refine our knowledge of the universe, and those finer details can get
tricky to hypothesize about and experiment on. In 1962 American physicist and philosopher of
science Thomas Kuhn suggested that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with the method,
but that we were putting too much pressure on the method to do all of science’s work. Kuhn
suggested there were different phases of science, the first just being normal science, which
followed the scientific method and tested hypotheses with experimentation, and everybody in a
particular field had a shared understanding of their discipline. Within this framework, scientists
got to the bottom of what was already known with more and more precision, and when
something came up that seemed to go against how they understood the world, they either put it
aside or treated the anomaly like a little nut, picking at it with a scientific method. Observation,
hypothesis, experiment. The only problem was that these unresolved anomalies tended to pile
up and become so conspicuous that some scientists began to question what they thought they
knew. Take gravity for example. Newton figured out how it worked. The apple is being pulled
toward the earth while the earth is being pulled toward the apple. Everybody used that
framework for 200 years until the anomaly started piling up. For instance, based on how other
planets interacted with each other and how light bend in space, Newton’s view didn't seem to be
true anywhere except here on earth. So, Einstein came along and suggested the existence of
photons, which pulled less massive objects toward more massive objects, and even pulled stuff
with no mass toward a massive object. All ideas that Newton would have definitely objected to,
and lo! Classical mechanics made way for quantum mechanics and physics has never been the
same. So, Einstein theorized creative possible solutions where the scientific method had left us
high and dry. This is what Kuhn called a paradigm shift, or a complete change in the
assumptions made about a certain area of science. During, one of these shifts, scientists are
willing to try anything, entertain any crazy notion, debate everything we took for granted to
explain an anomaly. In the end, there's a change in how everybody sees the world and the old
way of thinking is replaced with a new one, then normal science takes over again. Observation,
hypothesis, experiment. The scientific method’s equilibrium is restored!

Since Kuhn though, more changes have been made to how we do science. I'm talking about
computers here, lots of them, because at this point a robot can actually do science all by itself.
In 2009, scientists in Wales built a robot that could successfully formulate a hypothesis, design
and run its own experiments, analyze data, and decide which experiments to run next. Of
course, the discoveries made by this computer were pretty modest revelations about the purpose
of different yeast genes, but the point is computers are the future of science. I mean like take
CERN's Large Hadron Collider… that thing that's been turning out a gigabyte of data per
second, enough to fill up a DVD every five seconds. That data is being sent to labs all over the
world for analysis. There just aren't enough human scientists on the planet to process all that
information, so computers were the ones actually following the scientific method. Human
scientists would be freed up to do the cool stuff, the collaboration, the creative thinking, the
serendipitous observing, the strategizing about what steps to take next. At the very least they'd
be doing a lot less pipetting and that would obviously change a lot about how we think about
science. It would affect everything from the skillset we look for in a scientist to the way that
science is taught in schools. It would basically change the definition of science, at least as far as
humans are concerned. And as dependable and comforting as the scientific method is to have
around, and as much as I love pipetting, that's kind of exciting prospect.
Timeline of World History | Major Time Periods and Ages
https://youtu.be/__BaaMfiD0Q

Today I'm going to give you a very broad overview of human history. I'll be using the latest
version of my Timeline of World History chart, which is available as a poster from my website
usefulcharts.com. In particular, I’m going to be showing you how history can be divided into
various time periods – or ages – and I’ll be explaining how these divisions end up highlighting
some of the most important turning points in world history.

Let me start by explaining the basics of how this chart works. The vertical scale represents the
flow of time, with time moving forward as you move down the page. Every white line
represents 100 years and the scale is equidistant, which means that the distance between two
lines near the top of the chart is exactly same as it is near the bottom. This is important because
it allows for accurate comparisons to be made and thus gives the viewer a proper perspective on
time.

Horizontally, the various sections of the chart represent different parts of the world. So, on the
far left, we have the Americas, followed by Africa, Europe, Asia, and finally the Pacific islands.
Every line on the chart represents a specific culture, civilization, or empire and the width of the
line represents the relative importance of that culture when compared to other cultures from the
same time period or region.

The next thing we need to talk about are the terms AD and BC and their equivalents CE and
BCE. AD means Anno Domini, which is Latin for "in the year of the Lord". Basically, it's meant
to measure the years from the birth of Jesus. Anything before that point is called BC, which
stands for "Before Christ". Now, most scholars today have actually concluded that Jesus was
probably born in 4 BC, so keep in mind that the scale is a bit off.
So, as we move backwards through time, the AD dates go down but then once we get to BC, the
dates start going back up. And I should point out that there is no year zero. So, basically, the
year 1 BC was followed immediately by the year 1 AD. Nowadays, it’s becoming more and
more standard for historians to use the terms CE and BCE instead. CE stands for Common Era
and BCE stands for Before the Common Era. The reason for the change is simply an attempt to
use a more neutral term, which makes sense considering that 75% of the world is not Christian.

Ok, now that we've got that under our belt, the next question we need to address is: What is the
starting point for history? In other words, where do we draw the line between history and pre-
history? Well, on this chart, I've
used the year 33 hundred BCE as my starting point. The reason for this is that this is
approximately when writing first appeared. The basic idea is that without written records, we
can't have history. Therefore, everything before the emergence of the first writing systems is
best categorized as pre-history. And, of course, pre-history goes back much farther than 5,300
years. If we’re talking about the pre-history of our species, Homo
sapiens, it goes back about another 200 thousand years (a time period also known as the Stone
Age) and if we’re talking about the pre-history of the planet earth, that goes back about 4.5
billion years. But this chart doesn’t cover prehistory. Instead, it starts with the emergence of
written records and goes from there.

So, on this chart, history is divided into six main time periods: the Early Bronze Age, the
Bronze Age, the Iron Age, Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Let’s
now take a look at each, one by one. The Bronze Age gets its name based on the fact that
humans first started to make things out of bronze around the same time that they first developed
writing. This occurred in three main areas: Egypt, Sumer (which is modern-day Iraq), and the
Indus Valley (modern-day Pakistan). Unfortunately, the writing system used in
the Indus Valley is yet to be deciphered so we can only read the records from Egypt and Sumer.
But we do know that these three civilizations did trade with one another and that throughout the
early Bronze Age, each grew in terms of both size and technology. At the start of this period, the
Sumerians had already invented the wheel, the plough, and the sail. But during the early Bronze
Age, they also went on to develop astronomy and mathematics. Over in Egypt, it was during the
early Bronze Age that the Great Pyramids of Giza were built. Besides these three civilizations,
the only other place in the world to have large cities was over in what is today Peru. There, a
culture known as the Norte Chico civilization was thriving. But strangely, although they built
large stone structures, they appear to have had no writing system and no pottery. Stone
structures dating from the early Bronze Age can also be found at Stonehenge in England and on
the island of Malta. But neither of these places had large populations.

Okay, so that was the early Bronze Age. Now let’s look at the Bronze Age proper. Dividing
these two time periods is a very important event known as the 4.2 kiloyear event, named
because it occurred approximately 4.2 thousand years ago. The exact cause of the event is still
debated but we do know is that it resulted in approximately 100 years of extremely dry
conditions worldwide. Because of this, the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Akkadian Empire
(which had conquered Sumer) and the Indus Valley Civilization all declined rapidly and

in the time period that followed, we get a new set of cultures. Egypt was revived as the Middle
& New Kingdoms and the Sumerian civilization eventually evolved in the Babylonian
civilization. But in South Asia, we get a more dramatic change. The Indus Valley cities
disappear altogether and we get a new set of people arriving, the Indo-Aryans, who were part of
the larger Indo-European group. During the Bronze Age proper, we also get civilizations arising
in other parts of the world for the first time, including in China, Sub-Saharan Africa, and
unbeknownst to many people, North America. There we get the Poverty Point culture, where
large mounds and complex settlements were built. Finally, we also get the first civilization in
Europe – the Minoans on the island of Crete. Midway through the period though, there was a
volcanic eruption nearby which led to the downfall of the Minoans and the rise of the Mycenean
Greeks instead. This catastrophe could very well have been the event that birthed the Atlantis
myth.

The next big turning point in history occurred around 12 hundred BCE and is known as the
Bronze Age collapse. For reasons that are still somewhat unclear, the major civilizations in
Greece, Anatolia, and Egypt all disappeared almost instantaneously. What followed is often
called the Greek Dark Ages – a period in which the historical record for the region goes
somewhat silent. Interestingly, it is during this silent period that many of the world’s most
famous legendary tales supposedly took place, such as those found in the Jewish Torah, the
Greek Iliad, and the Hindu Mahabharata.

The Bronze Age collapse also coincided with the first use of iron in the Middle East. Therefore,
the period in which the Greek Dark Ages took place is also aptly called the Iron Age. This is the
third and final period in what is known as the three-age system, consisting of the Stone Age, the
Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

The next period is not actually part of the three-age system. This is because, after approximately
600 BCE, we no longer have to rely entirely on archaeology to get information. As I mentioned
earlier, humans have been writing since 33 hundred BCE. But there is nothing surviving from
the Bronze Age or Iron Age that could
really be considered a history book. Sure, we have the names of kings, lists of battles, and other
details carved into rock and metal but we don’t have anything that starts with “In this treatise, I
am going to record the complete history of X”. But, around this time, we do start to get such
writings, for example, from a Greek guy named Herodotus, who is often called the “father of
history”. So, in other words, we know a heck of a lot more information about this next period,
called Classical Antiquity, than we know about the previous periods. Classical Antiquity is
when the Greeks and the Romans laid the foundations for what would become known as
Western civilization, mostly by borrowing and building upon information gained from the
earlier Bronze Age civilizations.

But there was a lot going on in other parts of the world as well. For example, in Mesoamerica,
Olmec culture
would go on to influence classical Mayan culture, with its intricate calendar and writing system
and in North America, there was an extensive trade network where lots of different types of art
was being exchanged. In Africa, the long-standing Kingdom of Kush eventually gave way to the
Kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia. There was also the three mighty Persian empires, the Maurya
& Gupta Empires in India, and the first imperial dynasty in China. Eventually, a trade route
between all these areas opened up, known as the Silk Road, and thus the Western parts of
Eurasia and the Eastern parts of Eurasia were connected for the first time.

But perhaps even more importantly, it was during Classical Antiquity that humanity’s current
moral and philosophical foundations were laid. Simultaneously yet independently, we got Greek
philosophy, the Bible, the Hindu & Buddhist scriptures and the writings of Confucius. We also
saw the first experiments with democracy and the first evidence of truly scientific thinking.

But this golden age of human development did not last forever. It came to an end around the
year 500 CE with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In other areas, the classical period
ended a little earlier (such as in
China) or a little later (like in Mesoamerica) but basically, all over the world, most of the major
classical civilizations eventually crumbled. We then get what’s called the Middle Ages. The
word “middle” is used for this period because it is located in the middle between ancient history
(which consists of everything we’ve covered so far) and modern history (which we’ll be getting
to next). It’s also called the Medieval Period,
“medieval” simply meaning “Middle Age”. But one term that really shouldn’t be used for the
medieval period, but often is, is the Dark Ages. The reason for this is that the so-called dark
ages were really just limited to Western Europe. Other areas during this time, such as the
Middle East and China, were actually experiencing new Golden Ages.

So what made things in Western Europe change so drastically? Well, numerous theories have
been put forward but one thing we know for certain is that it involved large scale migrations in
several parts of the world. Whether or not these migrations were sparked by climate change or
some other natural phenomenon, we
can’t be sure. But it ended up creating kind of a domino effect. For example, the Huns moved
into Europe from the East and this pushed several Germanic tribes south, bringing them into
conflict with Rome. Eventually, it was these Germanic tribes, known to the Romans as
“barbarians” who caused the fall of the Western Empire and plunged Europe into the so-called
Dark Ages. But it wasn’t just barbarians that caused trouble. In the years 535 and 536, there
were several extreme weather events, perhaps started by a large volcanic eruption, that led to
famines and cool, dry weather all over the world. There was also the First Bubonic Plague, also
known as the Plague of Justinian, that killed 50% of the population in some cities.

In the East, these events did not lead to the Eastern half of the Empire falling but they did set
the stage for the rise of a new civilization nearby – Islam. But while Islam was expanding in the
Middle East, Christianity was expanding in Europe. Eventually, areas that started out as
barbarian kingdoms evolved into major powers such as England, France, and the Holy Roman
Empire.
But there were lots of other things happening in the world during the Middle Ages as well. For
example, in West Africa, we get several major empires for the first time, including the Mali
Empire with its ruler Mansa Musa,
who was the richest person ever in all of world history. And in Southern Africa, there was the
city of Great Zimbabwe, which included the first large structures ever in that part of the world.

A lot was happening in the Americas as well. We don’t tend to think of cities existing in pre-
Columbian North America but they did. There was Cahokia in what is now Illinois as well as
the Puebloan cities in New Mexico.
In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs were dominating and in South America, there were the Incas.

Finally, it was during the Middle Ages that we get the largest land empire of all time – the
Mongol Empire – started by Genghis Khan.

Okay, we now come to the sixth and final time period – the modern age – which is the period in
which we live today. One could argue that the transition started with the most deadly pandemic
of all time – the Black
Death, also known as the Second Bubonic Plague. Once again, up to 50% of the population in
many cities passed away and this perhaps helped spark the Renaissance. The Eastern Roman
Empire finally fell, to the Ottoman Turks, and in Italy, there was a renewed interest in studying
the art and philosophy of the Classical Period. Around the same time, Europeans started
colonizing the Americas and major advances were made
in science. This in turn led to the industrial revolution, which then gave way to the
technological revolution which we are still experiencing today.

Okay, so that was obviously a very broad overview. But what I think is perhaps most interesting
and most important are the similarities that can be seen in the transitions between each time
period. Often, they involved a combination of climate events, mass migrations, and pandemics
– three things that we are currently dealing
with in the year 2020. Does this mean that we are on the verge of entering a new period in
human history? I guess only time will tell.
The Neolithic Revolution: The Development of Agriculture - The Journey to Civilization
https://youtu.be/rboewQNMpdU

The prehistoric man lived for millions of years as a nomad, his community survived by hunting
and collecting fruit and roots. That is why men lived in constant migrations in search of food.
But a revolution was about to start which would forever change this old way of life. This
revolution happened with the mastery of agricultural techniques. Man learned how to sow the
land and reap the fruit of his work. This new habit allowed man to gradually settle down on his
piece of land, leaving his nomadic ways behind.

The first villages began to emerge near the flood plains of the rivers as these were the most
fertile land. Since most places where man settled down were not adequate to grow food
throughout the year, man began to give preference to the cultivation of cereals which besides
the nutritional value could be stored for longer periods. However, some of these cereals were
often attacked by pests and rodents.

During that same historical period, man developed the ability to domesticate animals as well.
The dog was one of the first to be domesticated as it would be used as a working animal,
helping to safeguard communities while engaging in hunting and livestock related activities.
Some basic requirements had to be fulfilled before an animal could be considered domesticated.
It could not compete with humans for food. Therefore, animals that fed on grazing or leftovers
would be the ideal option. Ideally, these animals could not feel panic easily.
However, if that was not possible, they would have to behave like a pack. When frightened by
forming large groups, they would be more easily controlled by their owners and their herding
dogs. These animals were domesticated in order to provide food for men, having also to reach
their adulthood rapidly, thus increasing their productivity.

Both agriculture and livestock serve other purposes besides food. The animal's leather was used
for several different purposes, both for clothing and the production of other items. And animals
like sheep, besides providing meat and milk, also supplied their wool. Vegetables like flax and
cotton were also grown to serve as fabric.

These small villages started to produce surpluses, trading and exchanging their products with
other villages. Commerce began to slowly emerge getting increasingly common over time. The
mastery of these technologies created the basic conditions for the emergence of the first cities.