A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple if inches of height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared.

[C]ompared to hunter-gatherers, the first city dwellers were anemic, infected, tooth-decayed, and almost two and a half inches shorter. Some biblical scholars believe the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'

So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their own way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple if inches of height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared.

S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 68-9