Even countries like France have expanses of hilly, relatively infertile terrain. Not everywhere is flat cropland. Same with many areas of Europe. The difference is that in the river valleys and coastal flatlands, there are a lot of croplands that did not need irrigation. This is where populations are concentrated, because this is where the food is. Asia is just lucky (?) to have much larger expanses of suitable, rain-watered cropland.
Look at a map of population distribution that is more granular than simply “by country”. There are huge areas of the world that are not suitable for much more than marginal agriculture, and others that cannot sustain agriculture or animal herding. Too dry, too rocky, to hilly or mountainous… The dense areas just have fortuitous climate and soil conditions. This for example -
The bright purple is an indicator that the basic farming capacity of those areas can support that level of population. Mostly, that’s concentrated in the Chinese Yangtze and the Indian Ganges. There’s a little bit in Europe (Holland is very densely populated, due to man-made fertile fields), and due to urban concentrations. Europe is also lucky in having industrialized early on, so the reversal of population growth is well under way and the initial explosion stopped earlier on.
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Most continents contain in the neighborhood of half a billion people. Asia has 4.5 billion. Why is this? **
According to this video, the lower costs of production and refinement of rice or a major contributing factor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Zdmd4J7TI . I’d be interested to know if there are others.
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Grew up in India. I would agree with much that is said in this thread except the rice part. Rice used to be the staple only in East and South India. North Indians grew and ate Wheat - people to the west (not the Thar Desert) a mix of wheat and corn.
One of the things in India’s population favor is the Himalayas - that shields India from the cold winters on the other side of the Himalayas. You can see this on a satellite map.
Another thing is that crops in diverse - 100s of different types of vegetables and lentils. There are at least half a dozen lentils that are as distinct as rice/wheat and are very much part of the staple diet.
Yes, and the population density of Manhattan is about 70,700/sq. mi. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. While a more granular approach may well be useful, I don’t think much is added by picking and choosing particular portions of a continent.
The areas to granulate about would be areas of similar terrain, rainfall, soil type, jungle cover and accessibility. The population density of the northern European plains is about the same, give or take a few intensely fertile areas like the recovered polders of the Netherlands. Ditto the river valleys of the Ganges, the Yangtze, etc. The rocky uplands that surround the Alps, and the Alps themselves, have their own characteristic densities. The USA may have a different density due to its settlement patterns, but the same density (roughly) prevails in each area - the flatter Mississippi has a different density than the Appalachians, the upper drier high plains, the Rockies, etc. Get far enough north and climate affects population density. Cities are always a blip, but the general population distribution of an area fits the pattern except for the few mega-city concentrations like New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, London where the population is supported by a much wider base of food supplies. Regardless, these megacities are a recent phenomenon, rather than a long-term feature of population distributions - only possible with the development of industrial transport.
Just a corrective to the common notion ( not necessarily expressed by you, your post was just a convenient jumping off point ) that China in particular is exceptionally densely populated as a whole compared to the rest of the world. There are areas in Europe that are just as densely packed as any comparable region in China. The difference is that the dense arable regions of China are simply HUGE in comparison - it’s a very, very large country ( more than twice the size of the entire EU ) with exceptionally favorable geography.
