Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative.. Instead, farming spread mainly through farmers' outbreeding hunters, developing more potent technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands suitable for agriculture. Jared Diamond
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According to the author, the spread of agriculture from a single source did not usually happen as a result of others adopting it. In fact, hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative, meaning they do not adopt new ideas readily. Farming, however, did take hold because of outbreeding, which is the process of having one or more offspring from a different mate. This process led to more potent technologies and ultimately caused the extinction of the hunters.

Source: Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies

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