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00:03 When humankind learned to farm, it was a huge game changer for our species.
00:07 No longer would our ancestors have to rely on hunting and gathering for resources,
00:11 placing so much of their survival on luck. However, an ancient farming settlement discovered
00:16 in Turkey in the 1960s didn't have the population boom we once thought, according to new research.
00:22 The site is called Çatalhöyük, and it was likely one of the first large-scale farms,
00:26 with Neolithic humans building it around 8,600 years ago. And it's big, roughly the size of
00:32 around 26 football fields. Archaeologists have long believed that upwards of 2,800 to 10,000
00:38 people lived and worked here, suggesting human population exploded around the advent of farming.
00:43 However, experts now say that number is grossly inflated, and only around 600 to 800 people
00:48 probably dwelled here at any given time. So what's going on? According to the new study,
00:52 the buildings at this site weren't all built and lived in at the same time. The researchers
00:57 liken it to modern hotels, which are not all occupied and full at the same time,
01:01 saying this is what is artificially inflated population numbers, with the study concluding
01:05 that each of the buildings at the site was only used for one generation of families.
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