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
Asian countries – China especially, has the most suitable climate for human species. That suitable climate also ensures multiple harvests in a single year.
Population growth is all about leftover food. In Stone Age, people ate when they managed to hunt or gather something, and starved rest of the time, because you couldn’t preserve leftover food (save for winter if it was cold, but food was scarce in winter, anyway). During agricultural era, people started to domesticate animals, so they could slaughter them only when food was scarce (living animals don’t need “preserving”), and grains that you could keep in granaries (given you drive out the rats and such). This led to leftover food and thus, population growth.
With multiple harvests a year, it’s even easier. And rice, that’s mostly cultivated in Asia, preserves really well. Plus, there’s no terrible climate or diseases that historically caused many babies to die.
Latest Answers