Some time after 10,000 BC, people made the first real attempt to control the world they lived     1     , through agriculture. Over thousands of years, they began to depend less on     2     could be hunted or gathered from the wild, and more on animals they had raised and crops they had sown.

Farming produced more food per person     3     hunting and gathering, so people were able to raise more children. And，as more children were born, more food     4    (need). Agriculture gave people their first experience of the power of technology     5    (change) lives.

By about 6000 BC，people     6     (discover)the best crops to grow and animals to raise. Later，they learned to work with the     7     (season)，planting at the right time and, in dry areas,     8     (make) use of annual floods to irrigate (灌溉) their fields.

This style of farming lasted for quite a long time. Then，with     9     rise of science, changes began. New methods     10     (mean) that fewer people worked in farming. In the last century or so, these changes have accelerated. New power machinery and artificial fertilizers (化肥) have now totally transformed a way of life that started in the Stone Age.