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

Rice is insanely energy dense for the effort that goes into cultivating it and for the land is needed to farm it. Humans need energy to multiply and sustain the larger population and rice provided the energy source for that.