eli5: Why do Asian countries have such high populations?

Question

What the title says. India and china alone have almost 3 billion. Asia has over half the worlds population. Why has this historically been the case even though many Asian countries developed far slower than European countries.

In: Other

Answer 1

When you mix the advent of agriculture with extraordinarily productive farms and the natural human tendency to breed like rabbits over a span of a better part of 100,000 years, you’re gonna get a few billion people.