" People didn’t start farming because it was individually better for them. To the contrary, it was probably less productive than hunting and gathering, at least initially, and only worked when mixed with foraging. As populations increasingly relied on farming, archaeological studies reveal that the less nutritious diets derived from cereals and other crops produced people who were shorter, sicker, and more likely to die young. However, the effects of sedentism and the productivity of unskilled (young) labor were such that farmers reproduced more quickly than did mobile hunter-gatherers. With the “right” set of institutions, farmers could spread across the landscape like an epidemic, driving out or assimilating any hunter-gatherers in their path. Thus, early farming spread not because rational individuals prefer to farm, but because farming communities with particular institutions beat mobile hunter-gatherer populations in intergroup competition. "

― Joseph Henrich , The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous