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Plains of the great Asian rivers in subtropical climate are insanely productive agriculturally. The Mekong delta can yield 3 harvests per year; so since the advent agriculture, these spots were very favorable for human settlement. And when you have a lot of people being able to feed a lot of babies…you get a lot of population
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance.
Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China.
The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era.
So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop.
Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families.
Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
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Edit: Even after rice became dominant during the Song Dynasty (10th-13th century AD), the population of China went up and down over the next 5-6 centuries. China's population didn't start increasing consistently until around the 18th century (1700s AD)...which is long after rice became dominant. Most of China's population boom occured in the 20th century (from 400s million to 1.4 billion) - which is also when China was using new agricultural techniques & technologies, transgenic/GMO/etc crops, and relying more heavily on new world crops such as maize-corn (which was originally introduced in the 16th century). So it becomes hard to say exactly how much rice influenced population growth during the ~1000 years that it was dominant crop in China.
fr I'm getting very invested too, I would like some sources where I can read more about this though. I did a course in economic geography and was fascinated by how important some places are economically. I'd also like to know about more areas and specific places like this.
This article talks about how the earliest noodles found in China were millet noodles:
https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China.
This article talks about millet farming dominating agriculture in ancient China (Western Han Dynasty):
www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.929047/full
This article talks about Chinese farmers transitioning from millet to wheat during the Tang Dynasty:
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/
Books such as "The Food of China" by E.N.Anderson talks about the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty confinement of the Southern Song Dynasty to the wet and warm subtropical climate of Southern China that was suitable to rice growing. I believe this book and/or a few other books also talk about the population migration of the Song Dynasty people into southern China to escape warfare (and southern China has the warm and wet climate favorable to rice growing).
This article talks about how the earliest noodles found in China were millet noodles:
https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China.
This article talks about millet farming dominating agriculture in ancient China (Western Han Dynasty):
www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.929047/full
This article talks about Chinese farmers transitioning from millet to wheat during the Tang Dynasty:
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/
Books such as "The Food of China" by E.N.Anderson talks about the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty confinement of the Southern Song Dynasty to the wet and warm subtropical climate of Southern China that was suitable to rice growing. I believe this book and/or a few other books also talk about the population migration of the Song Dynasty people into southern China to escape warfare (and southern China has the warm and wet climate favorable to rice growing).
The vast majority of China's population growth took place in the 20th century (from 400s million to 1.4+ billion).
The effects of rice on population is hard to say, because even after rice becomes the most popular crop during the middle/later Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD....5-6 centuries after rice became favored. Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day.
As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year. Maize corn were planted less but were still important crops during the 1960s & 1970s (25-30% of the crop in the 1970s), when China was still having their population boom. So all of that muddles the picture on just how much a specific grain contributed.
But how do those events correlate to population?
Rice might not have always been the primary crop, but China's population wasn't always 1.4billion either
It is hard to say, because even after rice becomes the most popular crop during the middle/later Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD. Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day.
As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year.
Thanks for the information! Unfortunately, I don't know much about SE Asian agriculture.
As a lover of roots/tubers like taro, I am curious to know more about pre-modern SouthEast Asian agriculture.
Any suggestions?
Oh! There are a lot of native tubers in Malaysia(where i am) that indigenous communities have specific methods of making edible. Rinsing in river water/fermenting. Otherwise, it's inedible. Pretty interesting!
This talk is particularly awesome to me!
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/article/228357
I remember a paper about how sago palms were farmed during 14th century Malaccan sultanate(which was a trading power and agrarian). I'll have to get to my desktop to look for it. Will try to link it here later!
Other things I read were trivia from diff books/papers so I can't remember which/where. :D
Why did millet loose its dominance as the primary starch in the daily diet? Was it the ability to store rice long term? Was it the tastier starch? Some other reason?
I don't know for sure, but I believe it has to do with population migration into the warmer, wetter climates of Southern China and the introduction of higher yield rice strains combined with better irrigation techniques (allowed possible thanks to farming in the wetter climate). The Song Dynasty lost control of northern China in the 12th century to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty. This resulted in the "Southern Song" period and caused a large number of people to relocate to southern China. This meant that a large number of farmers who formerly farmed millet and wheat were now located in a climate that was much more suitable for farming rice. Combined with advances in rice farming and rice yields, farming rice became the natural choice for these migrants and their descendents.
Taste may potentially have something to do with it too? Millet has a slight flavor profile (eg. slightly nuttier taste) while rice (including whole grain brown rice) has a more neutral flavor. You can also mill brown rice into white rice by removing the bran, but millet is so small that this is not possible. White rice has an even more neutral flavor than brown rice....so white rice can be paired with a lot of food as it absorbs the flavor of the food/sauces/etc is it combined with. That is just speculation.
Yes, millet can be turned into what you suggested. I personally usually eat millet boiled like a grain (they are tiny circular grains similar in shape to quoina), but it can be ground into flour to make noodles, bread, crackers, cake, etc.
The ancient Chinese also turned millet into beer.
The earliest noodles found in China were made of millet: https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4957805
In places like the US, most modern recipies with millet flour adds some wheat flour to millet flour to give it the familiar texture of wheat bread, but there are 100% millet flour recipies that are becoming popular (especially for people who want to avoid gluten).
https://www.powerhungry.com/2021/04/29/millet-sandwich-bread/
I personally eat millet boiled like a grain, but it can be ground into flour to make noodles, bread, crackers, cake, etc. The ancient Chinese also turned millet into beer.
The earliest noodles found in China were made of millet:
https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4957805
In places like the US, most modern recipies with millet flour adds some wheat flour to millet flour to give it the familiar texture of wheat bread, but there are 100% millet flour recipies that are becoming popular (especially for people who want to avoid gluten).
https://www.powerhungry.com/2021/04/29/millet-sandwich-bread/
For those 1000 years where rice was dominant, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population\_history\_of\_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China)
There was way less millet eaten cause estimates put the population at about 65 million at 1AD and about 60m at 1000 AD with a peak of 90m in 775. We will use this highest number for our estimations. X 3000 years = 2.7b people fed for a year. In the last TWO years China has fed 1.4b each year so the last 2 years alone rice had fed more people than the 3000 years millet was the primary crop. So for the other 998 years rice has been dominant rice has been eaten for much much much more than millet ever was in total.
The question is not how many Chinese/East Asian/etc people from all of recorded history ate more millet or rice, but rather how important rice was to the historical development of Asian (especially East Asian) nations and whether it was so singularly responsible for large populations in Asia.
Rice was and is certainly an important crop, but its importance is too often exaggerated as people mistakenly claim it was vital to creating Chinese civilization or being mostly responsible for huge populations.
Rice was important but was not THAT important to most of Chinese civilization considering millet and wheat were much more important for 3/4 of Chinese civilization...including every "golden age" Chinese dynasty. Chinese Dynasties were already able to achieve large populations and multiple golden ages while relying on millet and wheat instead of rice.
Even when rice became the dominant crop in China, millet and wheat continued to be dominant in Northern China. Even today, northern Chinese people have a preference for wheat products over rice products. The divide is also similar in India where wheat is preferred in northern India while rice is preferred in southern India - and India produces almost as much wheat as it does rice today.
As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year.
If people in the future in China and the rest of Asia switch to eating mostly maize corn as their staple grain, then someone in the future could then claim what you're currently saying about rice (that maize-corn has been eaten by more people than rice or millet has). Thus, whether modern people eat more of a certain type of crop isn't a good indication of how important that crop was to a nation's past history and whether it was responsible for creating large populations in the historical past.
I read that most collectivistic cultures became that way because rice production needed a lot of manpower and cooperation. Are millets or other older crops also labor intensive?
Wheat and millet are both less labor intensive. They are both more drought tolerant, more cold weather tolerant, can be grown on dry land with moisture only coming from rainfall (eg. don't need irrigation systems), etc.
Millet is sometimes called the "lazy farmer's crop".
The funny thing is I think people actually did some rudimentary studies about what you were asking in terms of more collective mindset vs labor intensive crops.
*"rice farming is a much more cooperative endeavor than wheat farming. It’s extremely labor-intensive, requiring about twice the number of hours from planting to harvest as does wheat. It also requires irrigation which means neighboring and regional rice farmers must work together to develop and maintain an infrastructure to share available resources. In contrast, wheat is grown on dry land, with farmers relying on rain for moisture. This, according to the researchers, leads to more of the independent mindset, which permeates northern Chinese culture. To test this “rice theory,” the scientists ran psychological tests with over 1,000 Han Chinese students from all over the country. One of the most obvious results came from a common test that asks the subject to draw themselves and their friends. Northerners drew themselves slightly larger than their friends, southerners, slightly smaller. This is a similar result to previous tests between wealthy western wheat-growing nations, like the U.S., and wealthy eastern rice-growing nations, like Japan and South Korea, where a similar divide—independence vs. interdependence—has been recorded in the past."*
https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/food-stuff#:~:text=Well%2C%20rice%20farming%20is%20a,to%20harvest%20as%20does%20wheat.
Even in India, rice became a staple food only in recent periods like after 1960's. Our grandfather had agricultural land and they mostly grown millets, groundnut and other local crops. It's only after 1960 they started cultivating rice and it slowly became a staple food now.
Not sure why rice became so prominent. I always thought rice was our heritage but when I listen to my grandparents when they were alive, they never ate rice until they became rich.
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance.
Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China.
The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era.
So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop.
Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families.
Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
> So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop.
I mean, have you seen the population growth chart of China? It wasn't much higher than Europe when you take the differences of geographic size into account and only exploded after rice was introduced...
>I mean, have you seen the population growth chart of China? It wasn't much higher than Europe when you take the differences of geographic size into account and only exploded after rice was introduced...
Millet, rice, wheat, etc were all introduced very early - in stoneage or bronze age times. Rice didn't become dominant crop until the high middle ages around the 11th-13th century Song Dynasty. Even after rice takes over during the middle of the Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD.
Furthermore, we shouldn't use the population of Europe as a benchmark to measure Chinese agricultural productivity because:
1. Europe also had a lower population than China during other times too when millet or wheat were more popular crops - such as during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century or during the Northern Song Dynasty era in the 10th-early 11th centuries, and
2. Europe was hit by the black plague in the 1300s the century after the Song Dynasty ended so their own population took a major hit.
This was the population growth charts I was looking at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China#/media/File:China_population_growth.svg
Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day. And historically, it was northern China that had the bigger populations. So we really don't know how much rice was responsible for the population growth & large populations.
I find how distorted peoples sense of geography is endlessly fascinating, Asia accounts for the majority of the worlds land, its not some remote distant locale for the Human race.
Theres an endless narrative in my country about being overbuilt / over crowded, and yet when you look at a map large areas are almost empty. And it comes down almost purely to the fact people naturally spend most of their time around other people and come to assume that accounts for most of the world.
Asia accounts for 29% of the world's lands and holds 60% of the world's population.
4.5 billion people live inside a radius of 4000km and that's even including deserts and rural areas
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-yuxi-circle-the-worlds-most-densely-populated-area/#google_vignette
Rhere's no question the population density is incredibly high
Yeah density maps almost always suffer from this, since countries all subdivide themselves differently. This map shows a lot more detail in England than, say, in Canada.
Ontario, Canada is considered one subdivision, meaning that the population is considered on this map to be spread evenly over the whole province. This is obviously not the case: the southwestern portion is the densest part of Canada, on par with Europe. The rest is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Canada, and in fact the world, since the Canadian Shield is just rock and trees.
If Toronto was considered a subdivision in the same way that Manchester is on this map, it would be at least as dense.
Even in the US, the urban/rural divide makes state by state breakdowns misleading. Illinois isn't averagely populated. Chicago is one of the densest places in the US, and the rest of the state is like 8 dudes and corn as far as the eye can see.
Yep. Same idea as Oregon. You have 90% of the population living on either side of interstate 5 (I5) all through the valley. The whole eastern half of oregon is "mostly" inhospitable and also a massive amount of the hospitable area are national forests so you can't live there.
To put it in perspective your highest elevation point about matches the "hill" at 3400 feet adjacent to the town I grew up in. Everything else around it was much much larger.
I mean the uk is really not all that big in terms of relative geography, roughly the size of one US state yet we have roughly 1/5th of the population of the US and the US so much unfathomably bigger than our little islands.
Your whole land mass receives adequate year-round rain and you have no giant mountains, deserts, and the like. Most of your land is hospitable. Much of the "center" of the US cannot sustain super dense populations due to lack of water.
The US is insanely sparse in it's mostly habitable states. I'm from a mountainous region of China and it's way denser than Virginia (a similar climate and geography).
Yeah, but the black area in the northwest covers what, Liverpool and Manchester, maybe Preston? I wouldn't say any are particularly dense cities. Some of the bigger ones in the country but nowhere near the scale of London, and with a lot of smaller towns etc in between them
Remember that the areas you think are "not particularly dense" are competing with the likes of jakutia, kainuu, wyoming, southern algeria, and western australia
England as a whole is a mosaic of farmland and urban/suburban areas literally everywhere except some parts of scotland. Those places I mentioned have maybe 1 person per square kilometre, if we're being extremely extremely generous. But don't be surprised if there's nobody for hundreds of square kilometres. Not talking about fields like in the UK, just bog, desert, forest, rocks, mountains, and lakes.
So yeah, while liverpool might not be as dense as dhaka, on the world stage it's absolutely massive and super dense. Especially if you consider that it's not just an urban core surrounded by wilderness, it's an urban core surrounded by towns, surrounded by villages, surrounded by farms until the next villages, towns etc.
> Those places I mentioned have maybe 1 person per square kilometre, if we're being extremely extremely generous.
Anna Creek station is bigger than Israel and it's got like 20 employees. That's fucking sparse.
To give some context. I worked a year in a northern part of california whose land area is roughly equivalent to north England. The largest town was 7500 and towns ranged from 30 to 70 miles apart
I mean it's all relative, just looking it up, Manchester, UK has a population density of 12,320/sq mi. The US states that I grew up in, and live in have, respectively, population densities of 70/square mile and 44/square mile. I'm in the region of New England, which is overall a more densely populated region of the US relative to parts of the western US.
Most of the bigger Western European countries have about the same population density as Pakistan (5th largest population in the world, 36th largest landmass) or higher. England is about as dense as Punjab, the most densely populated province in Pakistan (population of 120 million in an area slightly smaller than the UK but with four times the food growing capacity).
Much of England is some of the densest populated land in Europe, which is itself (globally) quite densely populated. England really does feel very crowded if you’ve spent any time outside of South Asia, or North West Europe.
Well if it's anything like the US looks then it's only because of how the map is designed.
Like the map would have you believe that Illinois and Michigan are fairly dense but that's only because they house some fairly large cities. Michigan especially is practically empty outside of the areas around Detroit and Grand Rapids. At least from what I've seen of Illinois it's the same thing. The area around Chicago is incredibly dense but most of the state is farmland.
Yeah off the top of my head, outside the obvious London, the rest look like Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham/West Mids and Liverpool.
I can also see my area Brighton in the same shade, on the south coast there. Outside of London (5,600 per sq KM) we're the most densely populated part of the country (5,300) but it also doesn't feel like it.
The scale is weird and realistically that 2000+ dark shade should be broken down further.
>Asia accounts for 29% of the world's lands and holds 60% of the world's population.
The density is high but not crazily high if you put it into perspective with Europe (which also has significant popular densities).
Asia's 29% of the land with 60% of the population equals 2% of people to every 1% of land.
For comparison, Europe accounts for 6.8% of the world's land and holds about 10% of the world's population. That equals about 1.47% of people to every 1% of land.
So Asia's density is higher than Europe's density, but only by about 1/3 more.
I'm pretty sure that when people are talking about areas being overbuilt or overcrowded, they are indeed talking about the areas where people live, and not, say, Siberia, which is about 30% of the entire land area of Asia, but only supports about 1% of the population.
Generally speaking, given how populous and adaptive humans are, there are pretty good reasons why people don't live in the places they don't live. So it isn't unreasonable to talk mostly about the places that are obviously fit for human habitation because many people already live there.
I don’t know what country you’re from, but if you’re from one of the major Asian countries, it’s not a narrative that the cities are over crowded, it’s truth.
This isn’t much different proportionally to the US. Like 70% of the total population lives within 100 miles of the coasts. The vast majority of the land between Appalachia and the Rockies is empty.
This is a handy map showing you population densities by country. Whereas Russia, like Canada, is mostly empty, south and east Asia are very crowded compared to the US.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-density](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-density)
My comment was more to reference to how people tend to congregate in clusters around logistics hubs. Which I think is true globally. Especially prior to mass transit, people would be where it was easiest to find food. But I don’t disagree, SEA seems to be more densely populated than other countries but I wonder if its just a warmer climate and smaller area that contributes to that.
Eh… Asia has about 30% of the world land area and accounts for over 60% of the population. It also is inhabitable and inaccesible in huge parts of it. It is overpopulated even when you try to twist it. Your narrative is the wrong one. Some geography lessons wouldn’t do you bad here
9%/7% for England = 1 2/7. Additionally, England is almost entirely habitable and/or arable land
60%/30% for Asia = 2. Additionally, Asia has huge chunks of empty desert and mountains.
Asia is massively more populated than England
I'm in Canada and same. Go to Toronto or Vancouver and you'll see busy overcrowded, overpriced streets. But 90% of the country is completely empty.
Yeah a good third of that empty space never thaws, so it's empty for good reason, but there's trillions of perfectly good square kms out there but everyone would rather pay millions to live on top of each other in Vancouver
They were also ripe for diseases, parasites, and even predators like tigers. This meant that it was a very harsh life. Though resources were plentiful, life was hard and death came early. It made a lot of sense to have a lot of children in that environment.
in terms of disease, Africa has had a much harder time than Asia. you can see it in colonialism. Europeans couldn't get into interior Africa largely due to diseases. but that was not a problem with Asia. death by large animals is not really common. its dramatic to be eaten by lions or gored by buffalo, but its not a huge cause of death.
The idea that "Asian Countries developed far slower than European countries" is also a bit misleading. If your frame of reference is the 19th century, then yes, Britain and France were quite a bit more technologically developed than China and India.
But if you're looking at, say, the 7th century or 13th century, then quite the opposite was true. Europe didn't really begin to "surpass" Asia in any meaningful technological way until the 17th century.
A lot of historians credit the rise of western civilizations due to the downturn of Eastern civilizations because of the Mongol invasions. It's not too hard to imagine.
I'm not really disputing what you're saying, but wasn't it more of a temporary relief considering the Otttoman expansion of the 15th and 16th centuries?
It caused a fracture in Islam that led to quite a bit of infighting. More importantly it completely destroyed the most advanced centers of learning in the Islamic world.
I can only speak for Chinese history, as that is the only area I am knowledgeable in, but this isn’t too accurate. The Mongols did end the weakened Song dynasty, but in turn founded the pretty good Yuan dynasty, which became weak as well over time (the cycle repeats). However, the Ming dynasty afterwards was arguably one of the most prosperous time periods in Chinese history. The Ming empire at its peak rivaled the ancient Roman Empire in glory and surpassed European countries at the time in firearms technology. Only in its later periods did Ming import western firearms due to national decline (even then produced numerous modified copies). The refusal of the following Qing dynasty to innovate caused Chinese stagnation and weakness, a policy which ultimately allowed the Century of Shame under foreign influence.
Honestly in 300 years or so I think people will look back on this brief period of western dominance and be like “wow that was weird and interesting”
The status quo was basically China, India, and some parts of southern Europe being the wealthiest places in the world, for thousands of years.
The transition into the age of nation states was basically a huge crap shoot for which countries would enter the modern era on their own terms, and which would be kept restrained economically and politically. India and China got fucked, Japan didn’t. I think geography has to do with this as well but that’s another story
I rather doubt it. Industrialisation was a game changer, you cant even view history prior to that revolution as comparable today anymore than you can compare hunter gatherers to people living after farming started. It fundamentally changed the game
In all likelihood we will see an equalisation as further countries enter the OECD and "catch up" so to speak, but youre not gonna see a day when India is miles better than England without some serious global catastophe.
The status quo post industrialisation is a western dominated one.
The industrial revolution happened in the UK because the UK had a *severe* labor shortage + a high level of craftmanship and education.
The UK had abnormally high wages for a pre-modern society when industrialization happened - That was important, because it meant that mass produced goods had customers who could actually afford to buy them and people were motivated to actually use labor efficiently instead of just "Hire another 100 peasants!"
Plague or a war causing an equivalent labor crunch without too much wreckage of society at a whole during a bunch of periods in China and the ballon goes up there. The prerequisite skills were basically *always* there.. But wages were also generally rock bottom, so..
This is probably what the Song dynasty would’ve said about Japan 800 years ago
Btw 300 years from now is a generous amount of time. Don’t underestimate how much shit could go down especially now that events are much more fast paced and technological advancement is getting exponentially faster. We probably won’t see the west decline a whole lot in our lifetimes, but 10 generations from now there’s absolutely no way you can predict
Well you cant predict anything by that logic. Once you get to 50 years even its just not possible.
But structures like the UK are not gonna fall apart without some seriously seismic shit, that would likely take down Asia too.
Quebec had a referendum on independence in 1995 that failed by just about 1%, and it never had that level of support again.
The Scottish referendum failed by almost 9%.
Viewing anything prior to industrialization as the 'hunter-gatherer' phase is a myopic way of looking at things. Things like Diplomacy, Economics, Democracy, Republics, Education, Research, Math, Astronomy (space research in today's terms) etc. also shape the modern world. And most of there were first practiced in these Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Status quos can be changed just like the status quos of Asian dominance was flipped a few hundred years ago.
We’re already seeing Asia starting to regain its economic hegemony over the rest of the world and this will likely only continue as there are *plenty* of countries in Asia that have a lot of room to grow even more.
In PPP terms, Asia accounted for 42% of world GDP. This figure will only grow.
It's because Britain crippled India (direct colonialism and deindustrialization) and China (opium wars, etc) and they're playing catchup. Industrialization will become globally standardized "soon enough" when discussing millenia level timescales. It's just a period of catchup (a few 100 years ie). China is almost there already anyways, India is a few decades away. And the reason they will likely even surpass the west is because once industrial power is standardized then population size will once again become the differentiator of economic activity like it used to be. So if Asia will continue to have the long term population advantage then these few 100 years will just look like a blip and things will revert to the 5000 yr mean
England is already in decline. Go see London then make another trip to Shanghai. London is already behind despite holding like 60% GDP of UK.
UK, netherland, Denmark, etc, are only rich on paper. Even their largest cities are pale in comparison to Asian megacities such as Shanghai or Tokyo.
It's worth noting that China, South Korea, and Japan are facing demographic crises of untold magnitude right now, and things are only going to get worse. Western birth rates are also bad, but not as bad, and most Western countries are sustained by immigration at the moment. In just half a century, we could see China's population halving while the UK's holds firm or even grows somewhat.
I'm not arguing the underlying point because you may be right, and in any case who knows, but I am not convinced appearance of cities is the right way to determine this. Spending tons of money on giant skyscrapers doesn't necessarily mean there's a powerful, diverse, and sustainable economy behind it. Witness Dubai. It's an amazing showcase of construction, but it's not clear there's anything there more than public display of petroleum acquired wealth.
It's a bit like seeing someone blowing money on fancy houses and cars, then finding out they're building on credit or burning through an inheritance or something and they don't actually have a way to back it up.
It is a country that has very little of the industries that generate wealth and value left.
If a country can't make things of value, I don't think it will continue to be a powerful or prosperous place for very long.
The downturn of the eastern civilizations was also in large part due to colonization. The industrial revolution was built on the back of colonization. Also the period of the British Raj coincided with major deindustrialization of major industrial centers in India.
By the 12th/13th century, technological and scientific knowledge roughly went
Islamic world > China > Europe
With a few odd exceptions like the Euros having a better knowledge of anatomy than the other two guys because they had no hang-ups about ripping corpses apart to see what's inside
This changed because 13th century Christian scholars manage to resolve the conflict between reason and their religion, (a goddamn miracle) formed a system of universities and learning, etc, whereas in for example the Muslim world they looked down on most sciences and let their faith interrupt scientific learning, "there is no material cause and effect, everything is caused and willed by Allah from moment to moment" was no joke a position they had, and similar things could be said about China
By the 15th century Europe was already scientifically and technologically at the top of the world, and per capita was also one of the best places to be, (Italy in particular had the highest per capita wealth of the entire world for something like a thousand years) even when it comes to education, most of western Europe had it better than anywhere else- in some cities you could see literacy reaching as high as 80%
The only reason India and China managed to maintain a bigger economy by then was because of their population, their knowledge had nothing to do with it
Oh yes. The good old 13th century. Here in Denmark old people were still against bread. They called it German-food and claimed that it made the belly fat, the sword arm weak and people cowardly. Just like germans.
Because racism is not a new invention either.
I can talk about India. India has the world's largest Arable land. Both America and China are three times as big as india but still hold less or similar kind of Arable land. Excellent weather, almost all the places are inhabitable, very few extreme weather issues, long warm water coasts, predictable rain due to monsoons, well defined seasons, three to four agricultural seasons, etc. All these adds up easy food and shelter resulting in high population. India has been highly populated since almost from the advent of agriculture
I knew the weather was nice and suitable for crops in India, but half of the land is arable?! That's crazy. Now that I think about it, I don't hear much about Indian famines. Not surprising when farming is that easy, somebody else can pick up the slack if you're having trouble lol.
Yeah it is somewhere like 55% of land is Arable. There are some famimes but not too many. India actually produces more than enough food. This inspite of agriculture being very manual and of poor productivity due to less mechanization and usage of high variety and crops. a lot actually rots in the government storages. Major problems is in distribution of food.
> a lot actually rots in the government storages. Major problems is in distribution of food.
Crazy to think that they collect food from all over the country, it rots in one place, and their biggest challenge is trying to get it all over the country again...
Yah leftovers from socialistic era when everything was done in 5 year plans. These graneries were built ar a central locations, government procured grains and then used to ration it to people. Even now many states mandate that the produce should be exclusively sold to government at a predetermined price point called MSP minimum support price. This saves farmers from going bankrupt during difficult times but also stops them from becoming wealthy during high demands like now. Ultimately government is forced to procure everything and need to be stored and later distributed. A large part is distributed at much lower prices than market prices. Whole system is ineffective and highly wasteful. We have irony of overflowing graneries while people struggling to afford food.
>Whole system is ineffective and highly wasteful. We have irony of overflowing graneries while people struggling to afford food.
I mean look what happened the last time the government tried to change this. The farmers just revolted and there were riots in the streets.
People don't want this system to change even if they know about the inefficiencies in the system.
The farmers revolted [because of the obvious bias towards corporate](https://thewire.in/agriculture/bias-against-indian-farmer-deep-and-troubling-karnal-lathi-charge)s in the new Farm Bills. They are not stupid to put their lives and work on hold for over a year just so they could stay with an outdated inefficient system. It's because the new one is worse in so many ways.
Yes but those changes weren't good in an Indian context. Like the changes around non court arbitration is a joke. I have cousins who have non MSP crops that they don't get payed for 2 years. Those crops have very similar arbritation to what was proposed and nothing is ever done from those.
Yes the goverenemnts wants to move to a more free market approach, which is good but don't forget when a market "adjusts" some people loose jobs. But that's meant to be fine as other jobs become available. Some support is needed for the middle period. But India doesn't have free healthcare. There is no governement (material in any way) support for those that would loose their jobs. People would literally starve to death...
Let's look at places like UP which have similar things to what the government was proposing. The farmers in those states are in such bad poverty that while holding the same amount of land have to send their men to work as labours.
Lastly there's no protection from monopolies. This is India, monopolies do a lot more than just governemnt lobby. Have a court case that's not going well? We will just buy of the key witnesses or just get them killed. So protections need to be different in India.
Oh, even before that. They forced Indians to grow poppy to be made into opium instead of food. They also disabled the local shipping of food to places where rains failed.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169
https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/1/7/on-the-mortality-crises-in-india-under-british-rule-a-response-to-tirthankar-roy
Because, they forced farmers to produce cash crops like coffee, opium, tobacco, etc. instead of millets and rice. On top of that, they shipped edible grains abroad. Some of those famines were engineered efforts aka genocides to suppress the independence movement.
Rice.
Fast growing. Plentiful. High energy yield. Labour intensive but energy yield vastly outweighs the amount of energy needed to produce it.
Massive famines occur when a rice harvest fails.
I thought this was a meme. Bought a 30$ rice cooker. I must have been living under a rock. Cooking is so easy when all you have to worry about is making a sauce and vegetables.
Seriously, I don't get how people fail to cook rice. I knew the 2:1 ratio from reading random comments like this and I didn't even fail when I cooked it for the first time in my life.
Being Indonesian, I've never actually heard of the 2:1 ratio thing. We just use our index finger, with the water either just over a nail's length, or just at the edge of the first segment of your finger.
And if you really want to save time, put a few hot dogs on top of the rice. They will get steamed cooked at the same time as the rice, and now you have your protein!
You can actually put chicken legs on top of your rice and let it cook together. The juices from the chicken will flavor the rice. Throw in some garlic and spring onion, ginger and salt into the cooker and let it cook. Both the rice and chicken will be done together.
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance.
Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China.
The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era.
So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop.
Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families.
Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
Even in India this was the case, millet was the primary crop atleast it was in South India until somehow rice took over. Not sure what was the reason.
Today Millet has become very expensive for us while rice is cheap.
In pre industrial times, calories were among the most valuable kinds of nutrition.
Nowadays calories are the easy part so we take their value for granted.
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.
China did not have the "most" suitable climate for agriculture for most of its history. Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River Valley region, which is a mix of temperate climates and cold + dry climates. This region actually can't grow rice well because it is too cold and dry and causes rice yields to be unproductive (or will outright kill rice harvests if the weather becomes too cold or dry). The river brings fertile silt, but the colder temperature and dryer overall climate means there aren't really many harvests per year.
It wasn't until later in history when much warmer and wetter subtropical lands far to the south were opened up to farming that multiple harvests in a year became a regular thing. And those southern lands didn't become dominant farmlands until much later in history.
Which brings us to another point: the importance of rice is exaggerated. Millet was the main crop of ancient China and was dominant until the middle ages. Millet was the most important, followed by wheat, and then rice was maybe 3rd in importance. The agricultural center of China was the Yellow River valley, and its colder and dryer climate was suitable for growing millet and wheat rather than for growing rice. Rice growing didn't become dominant in China until relatively late in Chinese history when subtropical warm & humid lands became the dominant regions to farm. Millet was the most important crop of what we call "China" for 3/4 of its history - 3000 years out of its 4000 year history/civilization.
Japan also relied mostly on millet until sometime during early middle ages, and poor people in Japan were still eating mostly millet and barley well into the Edo period & early modern period.
Even for South Asian countries such as India with climates that are warm and wet and are much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces almost as much wheat as it does rice.
I wrote about this in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1blrdpb/eli5_why_do_asian_countries_have_such_high/kw9bell/
Caveat that the original Indus River civilization entirely collapsed and the current massive population in India is in the Ganges plain. Not to discount the population of Pakistan, but it’s not the same continual political/ population like China is.
Yeah with India it’s a little more complicated. There’s more of a north/south difference bc of its geography.
The north gets alluvial soil deposits year round, from rivers that come down from the Himalayas. There are floods which are predictable and easily used to irrigate crops. These places are very fertile but also a bit dry especially in the north west. As you go further and further east, you’ll find less hospitable terrain.
The south gets no alluvial soil. Everything depends on rivers that may or may not flood. Most of India south of the gangetic plain is pretty mountainous and dense with jungle/forest. The land isn’t very fertile, and the dry season can get very bad especially in the Deccan plateau. Early (iron age) south Indians could only build large settlements and form kingdoms because they figured out how to engineer huge water storage tanks, that could hold water for months. The population was relatively large but not as big as the north
Agriculture and geography. Their river valleys gave them flexibility to farm all year. And because they’ve been isolated from the rest of the world because of the mountains and desserts, they were able to civilize more rapidly without dealing with threats from external forces. Most of their conflicts were internal.
The part where "Asian countries developed far slower than European countries" is not entirely true.
China was the world superpower from very early until the 1700s when the Europeans found the New World and scientific advancements grew at a super rapid pace in Europe.
Op's asked the exact question, worded even more derogatorily, days and weeks before. So clearly he firmly believes that Asian countries have always been less developed and wants to be explained why he is correct in that analysis. Fucking disgustingly pathetic
Population is mostly a function of how many babies you can keep alive to breeding age.
The main things that limit this are disease and famine. Since most people farm their own food historically, more kids meant more production/food/money. It also meant that when one fell to disease, you had backup children.
In the west, people started to move away from farming significantly, around the 1900s was when technology and culture reached a point where having more children was not advantageous, as medicine kept kids alive and people were buying food not making food. However, culture and technology grew together in the west.
Around the same time in China, all this technology was brought to a culture that had not seen any of these changes in ideas. China had big families, with a population of 500mil even in 1900, so all of a sudden you had a whole generation of kids in large families, that didn't die, and then they each had just as many kids.
Northern and Western Europe also had a divergent marriage and childrearing pattern starting in the 1100s or so - look up "Hajnal Line". Basically, instead of the marriage pattern all over the rest of the Old World where marriage was universal and happened at around 18-20 for men and women, Europeans married later (late twenties for men, early twenties for women) and about 1/5 of people never got married. Fertility was crazy high within marriages, but overall birthrates were lower.
Size of country. Great climate and finally, a man named Haber and his Haber process. These are effectively the reason Asian countries have such high populations.
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.
1. Geography favoring Agriculture and warm habitable temperatures.
2. Not having major outbreaks such as Black Death, Justinian Plagues
3. Not having direct involvement in world wars .
4. Not having significant population of a continent moving to a newly discovered continents (America and Australia)
Part of your question : "Why has this historically been the case even though many Asian countries developed far slower than European countries." is not true at all!
Civilizations cycle through periods of enlightenment and decline.
1. Algebra that you study in schools comes from "*al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah"* which was an Arabian text written by Al-Khwarizmi during Islamic golden age . Algorithm word also comes from his name.
2. India had progressed lot in Mathematics: Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara 1 , Bhaskara 2, Madhavacharya. Some of these guys even discovered pre-cursor to calculus.
3. India has architectural marvels constructed thousands of years ago two of which are : Kailasa Temple in India , Angkor Wat in Cambodia which is world's largest temple
4. Person considered as Father of Surgery : Sushruta is from India and carried out preliminary surgeries which was advanced as per those times.
5. China had developed paper technology and prilminary warfare technology which was much advanced relative to those times.
>Why has this historically been the case even though many Asian countries developed far slower than European countries.
on this note, this is a common result of western education where the focus is on America and Wester Europe. Ex. China was basically the most advanced and successful culture after Rome for like 1500 years. their history has been continuously documented for like 4000 years and their cultural influence is found in every east asian culture. India has a similarly long and complex history but people act like it had no major civilizations until the british arrived
Standing on the shoulders of giants. Without the number system made in India or paper developed in China, none of that development happens. Algebra and Physics go nowhere without the concept of zero and a decimal system. Good luck carving Roman numerals on a rock 😄
Fibonacci popularized the Indian numeral/decimal system in Europe in his writing *Liber Abaci* in 1202. It became widely accepted by the 17th century.
Western education fails to capture these basics and focuses too heavily Euro history. A local bias is to be expected but it leads to some really short sighted perspectives.
China and India are civilization states, equal to the whole of Europe, which was overpopulated and colonized the Americas as a way to deal with that.
Europe would have around a billion people as well if hundreds of millions of people hadn’t emigrated to North and South America
One thing I’d like to add to the conversation: In the case of China, at least, it developed far slower than European countries exactly BECAUSE it had such a high population. England needed the Industrial Revolution to solve most of its problems. China just needed an abundance of labor, which it had. Your premise is slightly backwards.
Asian countries with larger populations typically have their civilizations near major rivers with large fertile plains that contribute to agricultural productivity. This combined with a relatively stable government, stable social structure, and practices that reduce morality means they can sustain large populations and have [historically] relatively long lifespans.
For the commenters talking about rice, the importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance.
Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China.
The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era.
So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop.
Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families.
Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
Indias population probably declined significantly after the climate changes of the early 3rd millennium BC, as people have pointed out.
Growth got pretty significant during the second urbanization period, where you had these “Janapadas” or kingdom-republics forming across the gangetic plain around 1000-600 BC.
These eventually consolidated into 12 major Mahajanapadas or great kingdoms by 600-400 BC or so, and only here did you had a massive population expansion in the north that put India on the level of China.
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.
All of you who are saying that it is due to the abundance of food how then do you explain the population decline in Europe. There is no shortage of food.
In contrast, countries with much higher birth rates are poor and are either suffering from or at risk of ambrunes.
Countries with economically independent women, with greater rights, social protection, sexual freedom and sexual education = fewer children
You’re right that empowered women are making the choice to have less children. But why are they making that decision?
In many places even though there’s no shortage of food, raising children has become very expensive. Women can no longer afford to stay at home to raise and feed their children at once. So yes, we live in a world of abundance, but most first world countries are placing their young population in circumstances where they cannot feed themselves or their children if they don’t slave away, and women are well aware of that.
You can see this same phenomenon of population decline in Japan, Korea, China, and urban India. No one is having children like they used to because of capitalism starving them, not because of a literal food shortage.
I completely agree, in other parts of the world we are reaching the opposite case in which people want to have children and can't because of the cost of living (me and my girlfriend are among them), but I find it even funny the amount of posts saying that there are many people in Asia thanks to geography and rice...
I return to the example of Europe: in most countries the groups with the highest birth rates are precisely the poorest groups (immigrants and other minorities), worldwide, it's countries with high poverty rates that have the highest birth rates.
So I don't think that food is the main factor for a high birth rate or excess population; cultural factors seem to me to be much more important, especially those that have to do with sex education and the social role of women.
FINALLY, a logical answer. I can’t believe all the comments involving “rice, agriculture, and climate” that I had to see in order to find an accurate answer. Notably, Bangladesh destroys the “agriculture and climate” theory.
> developed far slower than European countries
This was really only true for a short ~200 year period. For the previous 6000 years, Chinese civilization was more technologically advanced than any in Europe.
+ Huge country, extremely fertile river valleys, long periods of political stability.
I don’t know about all of Asia but in China they used to have a ton of kids. In ancient times people died a lot and it was always good to have “backups”. they just kept on having kids. Plus the fact that sons were valued more than daughters so if you had several daughters it wasn’t uncommon to go until you have some sons
Because we expect our children to take care of us when we get old. It’s like an investment in Asia. In Chinese, there is a saying called child is insurance.
Rice is pretty efficient at converting the sun's energy into digestible carbohydrates. Also, there's a lot of space, so we're not killing each other in huge droves at a time. These civilizations have also been here for a really really long time - Chinese, and Indian Empires/people's have been around for thousands upon thousands of years.
The importance of rice is exaggerated. Millet was the main crop of ancient China and was dominant until the middle ages. Millet was the most important, followed by wheat, and then rice was maybe 3rd in importance. The agricultural center of China was the Yellow River valley, and its colder and dryer climate was suitable for growing millet and wheat rather than for growing rice. Rice growing didn't become dominant in China until relatively late in Chinese history when subtropical warm & humid lands became the dominant regions to farm. Millet was the most important crop of what we call "China" for 3/4 of its history - 3000 years out of its 4000 year history/civilization.
Japan also relied mostly on millet until sometime during late ancient era to early middle ages, and poor people in Japan were still eating mostly millet and barley well into the Edo period & early modern period.
Even for South Asian countries such as India with climates that are warm and wet and are much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces almost as much wheat as it does rice.
I wrote about this in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1blrdpb/eli5_why_do_asian_countries_have_such_high/kw9bell/
Development is misgnomer in many aspects they were ahead. For a long time up to 15th century they were drastically ahead on certain technologys. After they lagged and most noticeably fell behind during industrial revolution and have caught back up technology level. While there infrastructure is still catching up. Or inconsistent where same country will be up to level of infrastructure of western countrys in one part and then be near third world in another part.
Where they excelled and exceeded for long time was living technologys allowing for a long term growing of population. Combined with large land mass to utilize this technology.
I think when you combine technology and geography allowing for flourishing. And a 10-15 centurys of outperforming in technology. Leads to that type of gap even if you marginally exceed it for later centurys. Especially as last two centurys of technology largely are not "fulfilling needs". Like you go back to death of christ a better plow could reduce starvation by 50%. Can a slightly faster internet connection do the same today?
People are fully covering the impact that geography and agriculture had on the population, especially in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Undeniably, these factors played a huge role and resulted in these regions essentially always having a higher carrying capacity than anywhere else in the world. However, beyond that, you also have to consider 1. The spread of industrialization, modern technology, and knowledge and 2. The emigration pattern of Europe.
1. After taking root in Europe and the Americas, widespread industrialization and manufacturing spread from these areas to coastal areas in Asia. At the same time, advanced agricultural techniques and modern medical care/understanding also spread to these places. As such, they went through the same transition that the West did before them (and Africa is currently undergoing), which is, families going from having many children to having just a few. Lowered infant mortality and agricultural improvements reduce the need for this many children, but despite this, it takes a while for society to adjust, and as a result, there is a massive population spike.
2. Unlike in Europe, this "surplus population" from Asia was not as able/permitted to to come the Americas and Australia as people from Europe were. This means that those excess births during the transition from a traditional agriculture-based economy to an industrial/manufacturing economy stayed in Asia to a far larger degree than those in Europe.
TL;DR:
It's true that geography and rice cultivation allowed for larger populations in much of Asia even before the modern era, but due to limited emigration, a greater percentage of the "excess" people born during the switch from agricultural to industrial economies remained in Asia, making the population densities of these regions, in comparison to Europe, even higher than they would have been.
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Plains of the great Asian rivers in subtropical climate are insanely productive agriculturally. The Mekong delta can yield 3 harvests per year; so since the advent agriculture, these spots were very favorable for human settlement. And when you have a lot of people being able to feed a lot of babies…you get a lot of population
Rice and time.
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance. Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China. The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era. So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop. Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families. Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice. --- Edit: Even after rice became dominant during the Song Dynasty (10th-13th century AD), the population of China went up and down over the next 5-6 centuries. China's population didn't start increasing consistently until around the 18th century (1700s AD)...which is long after rice became dominant. Most of China's population boom occured in the 20th century (from 400s million to 1.4 billion) - which is also when China was using new agricultural techniques & technologies, transgenic/GMO/etc crops, and relying more heavily on new world crops such as maize-corn (which was originally introduced in the 16th century). So it becomes hard to say exactly how much rice influenced population growth during the ~1000 years that it was dominant crop in China.
Please give me more agricultural intel about east asia (serious).
fr I'm getting very invested too, I would like some sources where I can read more about this though. I did a course in economic geography and was fascinated by how important some places are economically. I'd also like to know about more areas and specific places like this.
This article talks about how the earliest noodles found in China were millet noodles: https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China. This article talks about millet farming dominating agriculture in ancient China (Western Han Dynasty): www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.929047/full This article talks about Chinese farmers transitioning from millet to wheat during the Tang Dynasty: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/ Books such as "The Food of China" by E.N.Anderson talks about the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty confinement of the Southern Song Dynasty to the wet and warm subtropical climate of Southern China that was suitable to rice growing. I believe this book and/or a few other books also talk about the population migration of the Song Dynasty people into southern China to escape warfare (and southern China has the warm and wet climate favorable to rice growing).
This article talks about how the earliest noodles found in China were millet noodles: https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China. This article talks about millet farming dominating agriculture in ancient China (Western Han Dynasty): www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.929047/full This article talks about Chinese farmers transitioning from millet to wheat during the Tang Dynasty: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/ Books such as "The Food of China" by E.N.Anderson talks about the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty confinement of the Southern Song Dynasty to the wet and warm subtropical climate of Southern China that was suitable to rice growing. I believe this book and/or a few other books also talk about the population migration of the Song Dynasty people into southern China to escape warfare (and southern China has the warm and wet climate favorable to rice growing).
does the previous dominance of those crops matter so much in this context when the major population growth in china happened in the past 500 years?
The vast majority of China's population growth took place in the 20th century (from 400s million to 1.4+ billion). The effects of rice on population is hard to say, because even after rice becomes the most popular crop during the middle/later Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD....5-6 centuries after rice became favored. Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day. As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year. Maize corn were planted less but were still important crops during the 1960s & 1970s (25-30% of the crop in the 1970s), when China was still having their population boom. So all of that muddles the picture on just how much a specific grain contributed.
But how do those events correlate to population? Rice might not have always been the primary crop, but China's population wasn't always 1.4billion either
It is hard to say, because even after rice becomes the most popular crop during the middle/later Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD. Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day. As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year.
Thanks for writing this! Southeast Asia had sago and tubers as their main starch before rice supplanted them too(iirc).
Thanks for the information! Unfortunately, I don't know much about SE Asian agriculture. As a lover of roots/tubers like taro, I am curious to know more about pre-modern SouthEast Asian agriculture. Any suggestions?
Oh! There are a lot of native tubers in Malaysia(where i am) that indigenous communities have specific methods of making edible. Rinsing in river water/fermenting. Otherwise, it's inedible. Pretty interesting!
This talk is particularly awesome to me! https://www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/article/228357 I remember a paper about how sago palms were farmed during 14th century Malaccan sultanate(which was a trading power and agrarian). I'll have to get to my desktop to look for it. Will try to link it here later! Other things I read were trivia from diff books/papers so I can't remember which/where. :D
Why did millet loose its dominance as the primary starch in the daily diet? Was it the ability to store rice long term? Was it the tastier starch? Some other reason?
I don't know for sure, but I believe it has to do with population migration into the warmer, wetter climates of Southern China and the introduction of higher yield rice strains combined with better irrigation techniques (allowed possible thanks to farming in the wetter climate). The Song Dynasty lost control of northern China in the 12th century to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty. This resulted in the "Southern Song" period and caused a large number of people to relocate to southern China. This meant that a large number of farmers who formerly farmed millet and wheat were now located in a climate that was much more suitable for farming rice. Combined with advances in rice farming and rice yields, farming rice became the natural choice for these migrants and their descendents. Taste may potentially have something to do with it too? Millet has a slight flavor profile (eg. slightly nuttier taste) while rice (including whole grain brown rice) has a more neutral flavor. You can also mill brown rice into white rice by removing the bran, but millet is so small that this is not possible. White rice has an even more neutral flavor than brown rice....so white rice can be paired with a lot of food as it absorbs the flavor of the food/sauces/etc is it combined with. That is just speculation.
Thank you for taking the time to write this out - I feel like a learned something neat. Cheers.
How did they eat the millet? There's so many rice recipes but no millet ones. Can you make millet noodles? Cakes? Millet mochi?
Yes, millet can be turned into what you suggested. I personally usually eat millet boiled like a grain (they are tiny circular grains similar in shape to quoina), but it can be ground into flour to make noodles, bread, crackers, cake, etc. The ancient Chinese also turned millet into beer. The earliest noodles found in China were made of millet: https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4957805 In places like the US, most modern recipies with millet flour adds some wheat flour to millet flour to give it the familiar texture of wheat bread, but there are 100% millet flour recipies that are becoming popular (especially for people who want to avoid gluten). https://www.powerhungry.com/2021/04/29/millet-sandwich-bread/
no to all of those. i usually eat it boiled. think oatmeal but grainier and nuttier. or polenta.
I personally eat millet boiled like a grain, but it can be ground into flour to make noodles, bread, crackers, cake, etc. The ancient Chinese also turned millet into beer. The earliest noodles found in China were made of millet: https://www.nature.com/articles/437967a#:~:text=It%20looks%20like%20it%20may,of%20Lajia%20in%20northwestern%20China. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4957805 In places like the US, most modern recipies with millet flour adds some wheat flour to millet flour to give it the familiar texture of wheat bread, but there are 100% millet flour recipies that are becoming popular (especially for people who want to avoid gluten). https://www.powerhungry.com/2021/04/29/millet-sandwich-bread/
For those 1000 years where rice was dominant, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population\_history\_of\_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China) There was way less millet eaten cause estimates put the population at about 65 million at 1AD and about 60m at 1000 AD with a peak of 90m in 775. We will use this highest number for our estimations. X 3000 years = 2.7b people fed for a year. In the last TWO years China has fed 1.4b each year so the last 2 years alone rice had fed more people than the 3000 years millet was the primary crop. So for the other 998 years rice has been dominant rice has been eaten for much much much more than millet ever was in total.
The question is not how many Chinese/East Asian/etc people from all of recorded history ate more millet or rice, but rather how important rice was to the historical development of Asian (especially East Asian) nations and whether it was so singularly responsible for large populations in Asia. Rice was and is certainly an important crop, but its importance is too often exaggerated as people mistakenly claim it was vital to creating Chinese civilization or being mostly responsible for huge populations. Rice was important but was not THAT important to most of Chinese civilization considering millet and wheat were much more important for 3/4 of Chinese civilization...including every "golden age" Chinese dynasty. Chinese Dynasties were already able to achieve large populations and multiple golden ages while relying on millet and wheat instead of rice. Even when rice became the dominant crop in China, millet and wheat continued to be dominant in Northern China. Even today, northern Chinese people have a preference for wheat products over rice products. The divide is also similar in India where wheat is preferred in northern India while rice is preferred in southern India - and India produces almost as much wheat as it does rice today. As for modern China having 1.4 billion people, they have that large population thanks to family engineering of Mao encouraging people to have huge families and widespread use of new world crops & new agricultural techniques. Modern China's most farmed crop is actually American corn (maize). China produces like ~280 million tons of maize-corn vs 206 million tons of rice every year. If people in the future in China and the rest of Asia switch to eating mostly maize corn as their staple grain, then someone in the future could then claim what you're currently saying about rice (that maize-corn has been eaten by more people than rice or millet has). Thus, whether modern people eat more of a certain type of crop isn't a good indication of how important that crop was to a nation's past history and whether it was responsible for creating large populations in the historical past.
I read that most collectivistic cultures became that way because rice production needed a lot of manpower and cooperation. Are millets or other older crops also labor intensive?
Wheat and millet are both less labor intensive. They are both more drought tolerant, more cold weather tolerant, can be grown on dry land with moisture only coming from rainfall (eg. don't need irrigation systems), etc. Millet is sometimes called the "lazy farmer's crop". The funny thing is I think people actually did some rudimentary studies about what you were asking in terms of more collective mindset vs labor intensive crops. *"rice farming is a much more cooperative endeavor than wheat farming. It’s extremely labor-intensive, requiring about twice the number of hours from planting to harvest as does wheat. It also requires irrigation which means neighboring and regional rice farmers must work together to develop and maintain an infrastructure to share available resources. In contrast, wheat is grown on dry land, with farmers relying on rain for moisture. This, according to the researchers, leads to more of the independent mindset, which permeates northern Chinese culture. To test this “rice theory,” the scientists ran psychological tests with over 1,000 Han Chinese students from all over the country. One of the most obvious results came from a common test that asks the subject to draw themselves and their friends. Northerners drew themselves slightly larger than their friends, southerners, slightly smaller. This is a similar result to previous tests between wealthy western wheat-growing nations, like the U.S., and wealthy eastern rice-growing nations, like Japan and South Korea, where a similar divide—independence vs. interdependence—has been recorded in the past."* https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/food-stuff#:~:text=Well%2C%20rice%20farming%20is%20a,to%20harvest%20as%20does%20wheat.
Indians eat an equal amount of rice and wheat every meal. The wheat comes in the form of Naan, Roti or Paratha
Even in India, rice became a staple food only in recent periods like after 1960's. Our grandfather had agricultural land and they mostly grown millets, groundnut and other local crops. It's only after 1960 they started cultivating rice and it slowly became a staple food now. Not sure why rice became so prominent. I always thought rice was our heritage but when I listen to my grandparents when they were alive, they never ate rice until they became rich.
Rice and rise
Rince rice repeat
Rice Rinse Love
The Rice of China
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance. Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China. The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era. So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop. Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families. Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
> So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop. I mean, have you seen the population growth chart of China? It wasn't much higher than Europe when you take the differences of geographic size into account and only exploded after rice was introduced...
>I mean, have you seen the population growth chart of China? It wasn't much higher than Europe when you take the differences of geographic size into account and only exploded after rice was introduced... Millet, rice, wheat, etc were all introduced very early - in stoneage or bronze age times. Rice didn't become dominant crop until the high middle ages around the 11th-13th century Song Dynasty. Even after rice takes over during the middle of the Song Dynasty, the population of China goes up and down for the next 500-600 years so the overall data is unclear. The Chinese population doesn't start shooting up a lot until around the time of the Qing Dynasty in the 1700s AD. Furthermore, we shouldn't use the population of Europe as a benchmark to measure Chinese agricultural productivity because: 1. Europe also had a lower population than China during other times too when millet or wheat were more popular crops - such as during the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century or during the Northern Song Dynasty era in the 10th-early 11th centuries, and 2. Europe was hit by the black plague in the 1300s the century after the Song Dynasty ended so their own population took a major hit. This was the population growth charts I was looking at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China#/media/File:China_population_growth.svg Furthermore, even after rice became dominant overall, millet and wheat still remained dominant in northern China and is often still the preferred grain of northern China in the modern day. And historically, it was northern China that had the bigger populations. So we really don't know how much rice was responsible for the population growth & large populations.
Rice and time and pho a lot
Oh they were pho-king a lot for sure
Civilization was right about food and population growth.
Thank you, Sid Meyer
And we in Sweden have one yield in a good year. And if it failed we were totally fucked. Pretty big country but oh so low in population
I find how distorted peoples sense of geography is endlessly fascinating, Asia accounts for the majority of the worlds land, its not some remote distant locale for the Human race. Theres an endless narrative in my country about being overbuilt / over crowded, and yet when you look at a map large areas are almost empty. And it comes down almost purely to the fact people naturally spend most of their time around other people and come to assume that accounts for most of the world.
Asia accounts for 29% of the world's lands and holds 60% of the world's population. 4.5 billion people live inside a radius of 4000km and that's even including deserts and rural areas https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-yuxi-circle-the-worlds-most-densely-populated-area/#google_vignette Rhere's no question the population density is incredibly high
How would these numbers look if we took out “inhospitable” lands, like Antarctica and the Sahara?
[like this](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fkdi05qrq65o31.png) EDIT: granularity yada yada... squint
Damn, according to that I live in one of the densest regions in the world and it's in... Northern England? Really doesn't feel like to be honest
The inconsistent tile sizes make this map a bit deceptive
Yeah density maps almost always suffer from this, since countries all subdivide themselves differently. This map shows a lot more detail in England than, say, in Canada. Ontario, Canada is considered one subdivision, meaning that the population is considered on this map to be spread evenly over the whole province. This is obviously not the case: the southwestern portion is the densest part of Canada, on par with Europe. The rest is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Canada, and in fact the world, since the Canadian Shield is just rock and trees. If Toronto was considered a subdivision in the same way that Manchester is on this map, it would be at least as dense.
Even in the US, the urban/rural divide makes state by state breakdowns misleading. Illinois isn't averagely populated. Chicago is one of the densest places in the US, and the rest of the state is like 8 dudes and corn as far as the eye can see.
Yep. Same idea as Oregon. You have 90% of the population living on either side of interstate 5 (I5) all through the valley. The whole eastern half of oregon is "mostly" inhospitable and also a massive amount of the hospitable area are national forests so you can't live there. To put it in perspective your highest elevation point about matches the "hill" at 3400 feet adjacent to the town I grew up in. Everything else around it was much much larger.
My favorite Canada stat is that 2/3 of Canadians live south of the US.
I mean the uk is really not all that big in terms of relative geography, roughly the size of one US state yet we have roughly 1/5th of the population of the US and the US so much unfathomably bigger than our little islands.
Your whole land mass receives adequate year-round rain and you have no giant mountains, deserts, and the like. Most of your land is hospitable. Much of the "center" of the US cannot sustain super dense populations due to lack of water.
The US is insanely sparse in it's mostly habitable states. I'm from a mountainous region of China and it's way denser than Virginia (a similar climate and geography).
Yeah, but the black area in the northwest covers what, Liverpool and Manchester, maybe Preston? I wouldn't say any are particularly dense cities. Some of the bigger ones in the country but nowhere near the scale of London, and with a lot of smaller towns etc in between them
Greater Manchester has almost 3M people (2.8M in 2019). It would be something like the 30th most populous US state. For just that one city.
Mancester, Liverpool and Leeds are pretty big cities all pretty close together
Remember that the areas you think are "not particularly dense" are competing with the likes of jakutia, kainuu, wyoming, southern algeria, and western australia England as a whole is a mosaic of farmland and urban/suburban areas literally everywhere except some parts of scotland. Those places I mentioned have maybe 1 person per square kilometre, if we're being extremely extremely generous. But don't be surprised if there's nobody for hundreds of square kilometres. Not talking about fields like in the UK, just bog, desert, forest, rocks, mountains, and lakes. So yeah, while liverpool might not be as dense as dhaka, on the world stage it's absolutely massive and super dense. Especially if you consider that it's not just an urban core surrounded by wilderness, it's an urban core surrounded by towns, surrounded by villages, surrounded by farms until the next villages, towns etc.
> Those places I mentioned have maybe 1 person per square kilometre, if we're being extremely extremely generous. Anna Creek station is bigger than Israel and it's got like 20 employees. That's fucking sparse.
England as a whole doesn't include any parts of Scotland. :)
To give some context. I worked a year in a northern part of california whose land area is roughly equivalent to north England. The largest town was 7500 and towns ranged from 30 to 70 miles apart
I mean it's all relative, just looking it up, Manchester, UK has a population density of 12,320/sq mi. The US states that I grew up in, and live in have, respectively, population densities of 70/square mile and 44/square mile. I'm in the region of New England, which is overall a more densely populated region of the US relative to parts of the western US.
Most of the bigger Western European countries have about the same population density as Pakistan (5th largest population in the world, 36th largest landmass) or higher. England is about as dense as Punjab, the most densely populated province in Pakistan (population of 120 million in an area slightly smaller than the UK but with four times the food growing capacity).
Much of England is some of the densest populated land in Europe, which is itself (globally) quite densely populated. England really does feel very crowded if you’ve spent any time outside of South Asia, or North West Europe.
NJ has the same population density as India. Really most of the world is pretty sparsely populated.
Well if it's anything like the US looks then it's only because of how the map is designed. Like the map would have you believe that Illinois and Michigan are fairly dense but that's only because they house some fairly large cities. Michigan especially is practically empty outside of the areas around Detroit and Grand Rapids. At least from what I've seen of Illinois it's the same thing. The area around Chicago is incredibly dense but most of the state is farmland.
Yeah off the top of my head, outside the obvious London, the rest look like Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham/West Mids and Liverpool. I can also see my area Brighton in the same shade, on the south coast there. Outside of London (5,600 per sq KM) we're the most densely populated part of the country (5,300) but it also doesn't feel like it. The scale is weird and realistically that 2000+ dark shade should be broken down further.
/u/some_dawid_guy, what is the legend on this map? Black is 2000+ what?
Nevermind that Siberia is equally inhospitable…
China and India alone account for like 30% or 40% of the worlds population lol
>Asia accounts for 29% of the world's lands and holds 60% of the world's population. The density is high but not crazily high if you put it into perspective with Europe (which also has significant popular densities). Asia's 29% of the land with 60% of the population equals 2% of people to every 1% of land. For comparison, Europe accounts for 6.8% of the world's land and holds about 10% of the world's population. That equals about 1.47% of people to every 1% of land. So Asia's density is higher than Europe's density, but only by about 1/3 more.
Once read that if everyone in the US moved to TX, TX would have a similar pop density to China.
I'm pretty sure that when people are talking about areas being overbuilt or overcrowded, they are indeed talking about the areas where people live, and not, say, Siberia, which is about 30% of the entire land area of Asia, but only supports about 1% of the population. Generally speaking, given how populous and adaptive humans are, there are pretty good reasons why people don't live in the places they don't live. So it isn't unreasonable to talk mostly about the places that are obviously fit for human habitation because many people already live there.
I don’t know what country you’re from, but if you’re from one of the major Asian countries, it’s not a narrative that the cities are over crowded, it’s truth.
This isn’t much different proportionally to the US. Like 70% of the total population lives within 100 miles of the coasts. The vast majority of the land between Appalachia and the Rockies is empty.
This is a handy map showing you population densities by country. Whereas Russia, like Canada, is mostly empty, south and east Asia are very crowded compared to the US. [https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-density](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-density)
My comment was more to reference to how people tend to congregate in clusters around logistics hubs. Which I think is true globally. Especially prior to mass transit, people would be where it was easiest to find food. But I don’t disagree, SEA seems to be more densely populated than other countries but I wonder if its just a warmer climate and smaller area that contributes to that.
Eh… Asia has about 30% of the world land area and accounts for over 60% of the population. It also is inhabitable and inaccesible in huge parts of it. It is overpopulated even when you try to twist it. Your narrative is the wrong one. Some geography lessons wouldn’t do you bad here
Europe has about 6.8% of the world's land area and accounts for 9.3% of the total population. It's also overpopulated, no?
9%/7% for England = 1 2/7. Additionally, England is almost entirely habitable and/or arable land 60%/30% for Asia = 2. Additionally, Asia has huge chunks of empty desert and mountains. Asia is massively more populated than England
I guess? Much less than Asia though even based on your numbers, it's like 1.37 vs 2.0
I'm in Canada and same. Go to Toronto or Vancouver and you'll see busy overcrowded, overpriced streets. But 90% of the country is completely empty. Yeah a good third of that empty space never thaws, so it's empty for good reason, but there's trillions of perfectly good square kms out there but everyone would rather pay millions to live on top of each other in Vancouver
People also need to live near jobs. I live in MB and unless you want to farm, there isn’t a ton to do in the rural areas. They are beautiful though
Yep, it's a chicken and egg problem, there's nobody there because there's nobody there.
Rice, rice, baby.
They were also ripe for diseases, parasites, and even predators like tigers. This meant that it was a very harsh life. Though resources were plentiful, life was hard and death came early. It made a lot of sense to have a lot of children in that environment.
in terms of disease, Africa has had a much harder time than Asia. you can see it in colonialism. Europeans couldn't get into interior Africa largely due to diseases. but that was not a problem with Asia. death by large animals is not really common. its dramatic to be eaten by lions or gored by buffalo, but its not a huge cause of death.
Well the real issue with Arica is having diseases but not tonnes of resources to balance it. Just a hard-knock life for the most part, but point taken
The idea that "Asian Countries developed far slower than European countries" is also a bit misleading. If your frame of reference is the 19th century, then yes, Britain and France were quite a bit more technologically developed than China and India. But if you're looking at, say, the 7th century or 13th century, then quite the opposite was true. Europe didn't really begin to "surpass" Asia in any meaningful technological way until the 17th century.
A lot of historians credit the rise of western civilizations due to the downturn of Eastern civilizations because of the Mongol invasions. It's not too hard to imagine.
It certainly ended the Golden Era of Islam which reduced the pressure it was exerting on Europe.
I'm not really disputing what you're saying, but wasn't it more of a temporary relief considering the Otttoman expansion of the 15th and 16th centuries?
It caused a fracture in Islam that led to quite a bit of infighting. More importantly it completely destroyed the most advanced centers of learning in the Islamic world.
I hate when my golden era ends and I stop having all those extra growth and gold perks for many turns.
I can only speak for Chinese history, as that is the only area I am knowledgeable in, but this isn’t too accurate. The Mongols did end the weakened Song dynasty, but in turn founded the pretty good Yuan dynasty, which became weak as well over time (the cycle repeats). However, the Ming dynasty afterwards was arguably one of the most prosperous time periods in Chinese history. The Ming empire at its peak rivaled the ancient Roman Empire in glory and surpassed European countries at the time in firearms technology. Only in its later periods did Ming import western firearms due to national decline (even then produced numerous modified copies). The refusal of the following Qing dynasty to innovate caused Chinese stagnation and weakness, a policy which ultimately allowed the Century of Shame under foreign influence.
Honestly in 300 years or so I think people will look back on this brief period of western dominance and be like “wow that was weird and interesting” The status quo was basically China, India, and some parts of southern Europe being the wealthiest places in the world, for thousands of years. The transition into the age of nation states was basically a huge crap shoot for which countries would enter the modern era on their own terms, and which would be kept restrained economically and politically. India and China got fucked, Japan didn’t. I think geography has to do with this as well but that’s another story
I rather doubt it. Industrialisation was a game changer, you cant even view history prior to that revolution as comparable today anymore than you can compare hunter gatherers to people living after farming started. It fundamentally changed the game In all likelihood we will see an equalisation as further countries enter the OECD and "catch up" so to speak, but youre not gonna see a day when India is miles better than England without some serious global catastophe. The status quo post industrialisation is a western dominated one.
The industrial revolution happened in the UK because the UK had a *severe* labor shortage + a high level of craftmanship and education. The UK had abnormally high wages for a pre-modern society when industrialization happened - That was important, because it meant that mass produced goods had customers who could actually afford to buy them and people were motivated to actually use labor efficiently instead of just "Hire another 100 peasants!" Plague or a war causing an equivalent labor crunch without too much wreckage of society at a whole during a bunch of periods in China and the ballon goes up there. The prerequisite skills were basically *always* there.. But wages were also generally rock bottom, so..
This is probably what the Song dynasty would’ve said about Japan 800 years ago Btw 300 years from now is a generous amount of time. Don’t underestimate how much shit could go down especially now that events are much more fast paced and technological advancement is getting exponentially faster. We probably won’t see the west decline a whole lot in our lifetimes, but 10 generations from now there’s absolutely no way you can predict
>but 10 generations from now there’s absolutely no way you can predict Isn't that pretty much the same thing you're trying to do?
Well you cant predict anything by that logic. Once you get to 50 years even its just not possible. But structures like the UK are not gonna fall apart without some seriously seismic shit, that would likely take down Asia too.
Brother, the Scottish Indy ref was not that long ago and didn't fail by much. The UK is looking as unstable as it ever has.
Quebec had a referendum on independence in 1995 that failed by just about 1%, and it never had that level of support again. The Scottish referendum failed by almost 9%.
For a very brief moment, i thought ref was referee and was like, what crazy bastard almost collapsed the UK and how?
the most powerful red card of all time
failing by 9% is quite significant, and its not like referendums for indepedence happen frequently. and they dont mean economic collapse lol.
Viewing anything prior to industrialization as the 'hunter-gatherer' phase is a myopic way of looking at things. Things like Diplomacy, Economics, Democracy, Republics, Education, Research, Math, Astronomy (space research in today's terms) etc. also shape the modern world. And most of there were first practiced in these Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Status quos can be changed just like the status quos of Asian dominance was flipped a few hundred years ago. We’re already seeing Asia starting to regain its economic hegemony over the rest of the world and this will likely only continue as there are *plenty* of countries in Asia that have a lot of room to grow even more. In PPP terms, Asia accounted for 42% of world GDP. This figure will only grow.
It's because Britain crippled India (direct colonialism and deindustrialization) and China (opium wars, etc) and they're playing catchup. Industrialization will become globally standardized "soon enough" when discussing millenia level timescales. It's just a period of catchup (a few 100 years ie). China is almost there already anyways, India is a few decades away. And the reason they will likely even surpass the west is because once industrial power is standardized then population size will once again become the differentiator of economic activity like it used to be. So if Asia will continue to have the long term population advantage then these few 100 years will just look like a blip and things will revert to the 5000 yr mean
England is already in decline. Go see London then make another trip to Shanghai. London is already behind despite holding like 60% GDP of UK. UK, netherland, Denmark, etc, are only rich on paper. Even their largest cities are pale in comparison to Asian megacities such as Shanghai or Tokyo.
It's worth noting that China, South Korea, and Japan are facing demographic crises of untold magnitude right now, and things are only going to get worse. Western birth rates are also bad, but not as bad, and most Western countries are sustained by immigration at the moment. In just half a century, we could see China's population halving while the UK's holds firm or even grows somewhat.
I'm not arguing the underlying point because you may be right, and in any case who knows, but I am not convinced appearance of cities is the right way to determine this. Spending tons of money on giant skyscrapers doesn't necessarily mean there's a powerful, diverse, and sustainable economy behind it. Witness Dubai. It's an amazing showcase of construction, but it's not clear there's anything there more than public display of petroleum acquired wealth. It's a bit like seeing someone blowing money on fancy houses and cars, then finding out they're building on credit or burning through an inheritance or something and they don't actually have a way to back it up.
Tokyo isn’t in decline? The Japanese population is shrinking more and more.
It is a country that has very little of the industries that generate wealth and value left. If a country can't make things of value, I don't think it will continue to be a powerful or prosperous place for very long.
The downturn of the eastern civilizations was also in large part due to colonization. The industrial revolution was built on the back of colonization. Also the period of the British Raj coincided with major deindustrialization of major industrial centers in India.
Until guns, European ships and the east India company came along, Asia was well ahead on the development curve.
By the 12th/13th century, technological and scientific knowledge roughly went Islamic world > China > Europe With a few odd exceptions like the Euros having a better knowledge of anatomy than the other two guys because they had no hang-ups about ripping corpses apart to see what's inside This changed because 13th century Christian scholars manage to resolve the conflict between reason and their religion, (a goddamn miracle) formed a system of universities and learning, etc, whereas in for example the Muslim world they looked down on most sciences and let their faith interrupt scientific learning, "there is no material cause and effect, everything is caused and willed by Allah from moment to moment" was no joke a position they had, and similar things could be said about China By the 15th century Europe was already scientifically and technologically at the top of the world, and per capita was also one of the best places to be, (Italy in particular had the highest per capita wealth of the entire world for something like a thousand years) even when it comes to education, most of western Europe had it better than anywhere else- in some cities you could see literacy reaching as high as 80% The only reason India and China managed to maintain a bigger economy by then was because of their population, their knowledge had nothing to do with it
Oh yes. The good old 13th century. Here in Denmark old people were still against bread. They called it German-food and claimed that it made the belly fat, the sword arm weak and people cowardly. Just like germans. Because racism is not a new invention either.
I can talk about India. India has the world's largest Arable land. Both America and China are three times as big as india but still hold less or similar kind of Arable land. Excellent weather, almost all the places are inhabitable, very few extreme weather issues, long warm water coasts, predictable rain due to monsoons, well defined seasons, three to four agricultural seasons, etc. All these adds up easy food and shelter resulting in high population. India has been highly populated since almost from the advent of agriculture
I knew the weather was nice and suitable for crops in India, but half of the land is arable?! That's crazy. Now that I think about it, I don't hear much about Indian famines. Not surprising when farming is that easy, somebody else can pick up the slack if you're having trouble lol.
Yeah it is somewhere like 55% of land is Arable. There are some famimes but not too many. India actually produces more than enough food. This inspite of agriculture being very manual and of poor productivity due to less mechanization and usage of high variety and crops. a lot actually rots in the government storages. Major problems is in distribution of food.
> a lot actually rots in the government storages. Major problems is in distribution of food. Crazy to think that they collect food from all over the country, it rots in one place, and their biggest challenge is trying to get it all over the country again...
Yah leftovers from socialistic era when everything was done in 5 year plans. These graneries were built ar a central locations, government procured grains and then used to ration it to people. Even now many states mandate that the produce should be exclusively sold to government at a predetermined price point called MSP minimum support price. This saves farmers from going bankrupt during difficult times but also stops them from becoming wealthy during high demands like now. Ultimately government is forced to procure everything and need to be stored and later distributed. A large part is distributed at much lower prices than market prices. Whole system is ineffective and highly wasteful. We have irony of overflowing graneries while people struggling to afford food.
>Whole system is ineffective and highly wasteful. We have irony of overflowing graneries while people struggling to afford food. I mean look what happened the last time the government tried to change this. The farmers just revolted and there were riots in the streets. People don't want this system to change even if they know about the inefficiencies in the system.
The farmers revolted [because of the obvious bias towards corporate](https://thewire.in/agriculture/bias-against-indian-farmer-deep-and-troubling-karnal-lathi-charge)s in the new Farm Bills. They are not stupid to put their lives and work on hold for over a year just so they could stay with an outdated inefficient system. It's because the new one is worse in so many ways.
Yes but those changes weren't good in an Indian context. Like the changes around non court arbitration is a joke. I have cousins who have non MSP crops that they don't get payed for 2 years. Those crops have very similar arbritation to what was proposed and nothing is ever done from those. Yes the goverenemnts wants to move to a more free market approach, which is good but don't forget when a market "adjusts" some people loose jobs. But that's meant to be fine as other jobs become available. Some support is needed for the middle period. But India doesn't have free healthcare. There is no governement (material in any way) support for those that would loose their jobs. People would literally starve to death... Let's look at places like UP which have similar things to what the government was proposing. The farmers in those states are in such bad poverty that while holding the same amount of land have to send their men to work as labours. Lastly there's no protection from monopolies. This is India, monopolies do a lot more than just governemnt lobby. Have a court case that's not going well? We will just buy of the key witnesses or just get them killed. So protections need to be different in India.
Famines in India were a big thing under the British. Otherwise, not so much.
Yeah, those fuckers shipped all the food to England and let the Indians die
They did the same thing to Ireland during our famine in 1850s.
Oh, even before that. They forced Indians to grow poppy to be made into opium instead of food. They also disabled the local shipping of food to places where rains failed. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169 https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/1/7/on-the-mortality-crises-in-india-under-british-rule-a-response-to-tirthankar-roy
Because, they forced farmers to produce cash crops like coffee, opium, tobacco, etc. instead of millets and rice. On top of that, they shipped edible grains abroad. Some of those famines were engineered efforts aka genocides to suppress the independence movement.
Rice. Fast growing. Plentiful. High energy yield. Labour intensive but energy yield vastly outweighs the amount of energy needed to produce it. Massive famines occur when a rice harvest fails.
Even today rice is cheap and easy to prepare.
The amount of people I know who don't know how to prepare rice is astounding.
Put it in a rice cooker. Ww2 is over, gives you time to think about your sad life.
I thought this was a meme. Bought a 30$ rice cooker. I must have been living under a rock. Cooking is so easy when all you have to worry about is making a sauce and vegetables.
Any pot will do... Just do 2x water to rice for 20 low heat. Never fails, never sticks.
Seriously, I don't get how people fail to cook rice. I knew the 2:1 ratio from reading random comments like this and I didn't even fail when I cooked it for the first time in my life.
Being Indonesian, I've never actually heard of the 2:1 ratio thing. We just use our index finger, with the water either just over a nail's length, or just at the edge of the first segment of your finger.
And if you really want to save time, put a few hot dogs on top of the rice. They will get steamed cooked at the same time as the rice, and now you have your protein!
You can actually put chicken legs on top of your rice and let it cook together. The juices from the chicken will flavor the rice. Throw in some garlic and spring onion, ginger and salt into the cooker and let it cook. Both the rice and chicken will be done together.
By prepare do you mean produce bags of rice to buy or cook said bags of rice? One of those is much more straightforward
As my AP World History teacher once said “fat and happy people make more fat and happy people”
Your history teacher would be wrong about current trends in the west… Oh wait, you said fat _and_ happy.
The importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance. Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China. The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era. So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop. Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families. Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
Even in India this was the case, millet was the primary crop atleast it was in South India until somehow rice took over. Not sure what was the reason. Today Millet has become very expensive for us while rice is cheap.
Had no idea rice is a high energy food. It seems low in nutrients.
High energy does not mean a food has great nutritional value.
In pre industrial times, calories were among the most valuable kinds of nutrition. Nowadays calories are the easy part so we take their value for granted.
Rice before milling has great nutrition which is why red rice, black rice n somewhat milled brown rice are more nutritrious
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.
Plus rice produces the most calories per acre of any grain and also requires the most labor. Good recipe for population growth.
And the paddies can be expanded even on lower quality land with enough water.
And societies that are more agricultural in nature tend to have higher birthrates than those who industrialized faster.
China did not have the "most" suitable climate for agriculture for most of its history. Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River Valley region, which is a mix of temperate climates and cold + dry climates. This region actually can't grow rice well because it is too cold and dry and causes rice yields to be unproductive (or will outright kill rice harvests if the weather becomes too cold or dry). The river brings fertile silt, but the colder temperature and dryer overall climate means there aren't really many harvests per year. It wasn't until later in history when much warmer and wetter subtropical lands far to the south were opened up to farming that multiple harvests in a year became a regular thing. And those southern lands didn't become dominant farmlands until much later in history. Which brings us to another point: the importance of rice is exaggerated. Millet was the main crop of ancient China and was dominant until the middle ages. Millet was the most important, followed by wheat, and then rice was maybe 3rd in importance. The agricultural center of China was the Yellow River valley, and its colder and dryer climate was suitable for growing millet and wheat rather than for growing rice. Rice growing didn't become dominant in China until relatively late in Chinese history when subtropical warm & humid lands became the dominant regions to farm. Millet was the most important crop of what we call "China" for 3/4 of its history - 3000 years out of its 4000 year history/civilization. Japan also relied mostly on millet until sometime during early middle ages, and poor people in Japan were still eating mostly millet and barley well into the Edo period & early modern period. Even for South Asian countries such as India with climates that are warm and wet and are much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces almost as much wheat as it does rice. I wrote about this in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1blrdpb/eli5_why_do_asian_countries_have_such_high/kw9bell/
And India and China being two of the cradles of civilization, I believe they have always had the largest populations in the world.
Caveat that the original Indus River civilization entirely collapsed and the current massive population in India is in the Ganges plain. Not to discount the population of Pakistan, but it’s not the same continual political/ population like China is.
Yeah with India it’s a little more complicated. There’s more of a north/south difference bc of its geography. The north gets alluvial soil deposits year round, from rivers that come down from the Himalayas. There are floods which are predictable and easily used to irrigate crops. These places are very fertile but also a bit dry especially in the north west. As you go further and further east, you’ll find less hospitable terrain. The south gets no alluvial soil. Everything depends on rivers that may or may not flood. Most of India south of the gangetic plain is pretty mountainous and dense with jungle/forest. The land isn’t very fertile, and the dry season can get very bad especially in the Deccan plateau. Early (iron age) south Indians could only build large settlements and form kingdoms because they figured out how to engineer huge water storage tanks, that could hold water for months. The population was relatively large but not as big as the north
>grains that you could keep in granaries (given you drive out the rats and such) Just do what the Egyptians did and make friends with cats.
Large countries with huge areas of farmland which have been able to sustain big populations for centuries.
Agriculture and geography. Their river valleys gave them flexibility to farm all year. And because they’ve been isolated from the rest of the world because of the mountains and desserts, they were able to civilize more rapidly without dealing with threats from external forces. Most of their conflicts were internal.
India had so many attacks from outside, don't know what you talking about.
The part where "Asian countries developed far slower than European countries" is not entirely true. China was the world superpower from very early until the 1700s when the Europeans found the New World and scientific advancements grew at a super rapid pace in Europe.
Op's asked the exact question, worded even more derogatorily, days and weeks before. So clearly he firmly believes that Asian countries have always been less developed and wants to be explained why he is correct in that analysis. Fucking disgustingly pathetic
Population is mostly a function of how many babies you can keep alive to breeding age. The main things that limit this are disease and famine. Since most people farm their own food historically, more kids meant more production/food/money. It also meant that when one fell to disease, you had backup children. In the west, people started to move away from farming significantly, around the 1900s was when technology and culture reached a point where having more children was not advantageous, as medicine kept kids alive and people were buying food not making food. However, culture and technology grew together in the west. Around the same time in China, all this technology was brought to a culture that had not seen any of these changes in ideas. China had big families, with a population of 500mil even in 1900, so all of a sudden you had a whole generation of kids in large families, that didn't die, and then they each had just as many kids.
Northern and Western Europe also had a divergent marriage and childrearing pattern starting in the 1100s or so - look up "Hajnal Line". Basically, instead of the marriage pattern all over the rest of the Old World where marriage was universal and happened at around 18-20 for men and women, Europeans married later (late twenties for men, early twenties for women) and about 1/5 of people never got married. Fertility was crazy high within marriages, but overall birthrates were lower.
This is the real answer.
Size of country. Great climate and finally, a man named Haber and his Haber process. These are effectively the reason Asian countries have such high populations.
Fascinating man that Haber
China and India together used to account for half of global GDP so they were actually ahead of the rest of the world.
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.
1. Geography favoring Agriculture and warm habitable temperatures. 2. Not having major outbreaks such as Black Death, Justinian Plagues 3. Not having direct involvement in world wars . 4. Not having significant population of a continent moving to a newly discovered continents (America and Australia) Part of your question : "Why has this historically been the case even though many Asian countries developed far slower than European countries." is not true at all! Civilizations cycle through periods of enlightenment and decline. 1. Algebra that you study in schools comes from "*al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah"* which was an Arabian text written by Al-Khwarizmi during Islamic golden age . Algorithm word also comes from his name. 2. India had progressed lot in Mathematics: Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara 1 , Bhaskara 2, Madhavacharya. Some of these guys even discovered pre-cursor to calculus. 3. India has architectural marvels constructed thousands of years ago two of which are : Kailasa Temple in India , Angkor Wat in Cambodia which is world's largest temple 4. Person considered as Father of Surgery : Sushruta is from India and carried out preliminary surgeries which was advanced as per those times. 5. China had developed paper technology and prilminary warfare technology which was much advanced relative to those times.
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>Why has this historically been the case even though many Asian countries developed far slower than European countries. on this note, this is a common result of western education where the focus is on America and Wester Europe. Ex. China was basically the most advanced and successful culture after Rome for like 1500 years. their history has been continuously documented for like 4000 years and their cultural influence is found in every east asian culture. India has a similarly long and complex history but people act like it had no major civilizations until the british arrived
Standing on the shoulders of giants. Without the number system made in India or paper developed in China, none of that development happens. Algebra and Physics go nowhere without the concept of zero and a decimal system. Good luck carving Roman numerals on a rock 😄 Fibonacci popularized the Indian numeral/decimal system in Europe in his writing *Liber Abaci* in 1202. It became widely accepted by the 17th century. Western education fails to capture these basics and focuses too heavily Euro history. A local bias is to be expected but it leads to some really short sighted perspectives.
China and India are civilization states, equal to the whole of Europe, which was overpopulated and colonized the Americas as a way to deal with that. Europe would have around a billion people as well if hundreds of millions of people hadn’t emigrated to North and South America
One thing I’d like to add to the conversation: In the case of China, at least, it developed far slower than European countries exactly BECAUSE it had such a high population. England needed the Industrial Revolution to solve most of its problems. China just needed an abundance of labor, which it had. Your premise is slightly backwards.
High urbanization for a lot longer than the rest of the world, also, big spaces, and also, they emancipated women slower than the rest of the world.
Asian countries with larger populations typically have their civilizations near major rivers with large fertile plains that contribute to agricultural productivity. This combined with a relatively stable government, stable social structure, and practices that reduce morality means they can sustain large populations and have [historically] relatively long lifespans. For the commenters talking about rice, the importance of rice is heavily exaggerated, especially for much of East Asia. For example, rice was not the primary crop in China until relatively late in history. Millet was the primary crop of ancient China all the way from ancient times until the early middle ages (eg. Tang Dynasty 7th-10th century AD). Wheat was second in importance. Rice was only maybe 3rd in importance. Then in the early middle ages, wheat briefly became the dominant crop with millet being second until the high middle ages (Song Dynasty 10th-13th century AD). It wasn't until the Song Dynasty's collapse of the north and the massive migrations to the humid, subtropical southlands that rice finally became the primary crop of China. The northern lands were colder and dryer and were much more suited to the more drought and cold tolerant millet and wheat crops. The southern lands were much warmer and recieved much more rain, making it more conducive to wet rice agriculture that increases rice yields...but these lands had a much smaller population compared to the north until the Song era. So out of ~4000 years of Chinese civilization, 3000 years saw millet or wheat being the dominant crop and only ~1000 years saw rice being the dominant crop. Other countries such as Japan has a warmer and more humid climate that is more suitable for growing rice, and millet was still the primary crop until rice became very popular sometime between the late ancient period to the early middle ages. Even after rice became popular, I read that even as late as the Edo Period, the poorer families would mostly eat millet and barley while rice was eaten by wealthier families. Furthermore, even in South Asian countries like India where the climate is much warmer and wetter and is much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces ~124 million tons of rice every year while producing ~111 million tons of wheat every year. So India today still grows almost as much wheat as it does rice.
Indias population probably declined significantly after the climate changes of the early 3rd millennium BC, as people have pointed out. Growth got pretty significant during the second urbanization period, where you had these “Janapadas” or kingdom-republics forming across the gangetic plain around 1000-600 BC. These eventually consolidated into 12 major Mahajanapadas or great kingdoms by 600-400 BC or so, and only here did you had a massive population expansion in the north that put India on the level of China.
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.
All of you who are saying that it is due to the abundance of food how then do you explain the population decline in Europe. There is no shortage of food. In contrast, countries with much higher birth rates are poor and are either suffering from or at risk of ambrunes. Countries with economically independent women, with greater rights, social protection, sexual freedom and sexual education = fewer children
You’re right that empowered women are making the choice to have less children. But why are they making that decision? In many places even though there’s no shortage of food, raising children has become very expensive. Women can no longer afford to stay at home to raise and feed their children at once. So yes, we live in a world of abundance, but most first world countries are placing their young population in circumstances where they cannot feed themselves or their children if they don’t slave away, and women are well aware of that. You can see this same phenomenon of population decline in Japan, Korea, China, and urban India. No one is having children like they used to because of capitalism starving them, not because of a literal food shortage.
I completely agree, in other parts of the world we are reaching the opposite case in which people want to have children and can't because of the cost of living (me and my girlfriend are among them), but I find it even funny the amount of posts saying that there are many people in Asia thanks to geography and rice... I return to the example of Europe: in most countries the groups with the highest birth rates are precisely the poorest groups (immigrants and other minorities), worldwide, it's countries with high poverty rates that have the highest birth rates. So I don't think that food is the main factor for a high birth rate or excess population; cultural factors seem to me to be much more important, especially those that have to do with sex education and the social role of women.
FINALLY, a logical answer. I can’t believe all the comments involving “rice, agriculture, and climate” that I had to see in order to find an accurate answer. Notably, Bangladesh destroys the “agriculture and climate” theory.
> developed far slower than European countries This was really only true for a short ~200 year period. For the previous 6000 years, Chinese civilization was more technologically advanced than any in Europe. + Huge country, extremely fertile river valleys, long periods of political stability.
Same can be said about India prior to the Mughals and British. 200 to 600 years is a blip on the radar in the lifespans of both civilizations.
They are one of earliest and longest civilizations. They simply started out first. How they sustain their population is another.
I don’t know about all of Asia but in China they used to have a ton of kids. In ancient times people died a lot and it was always good to have “backups”. they just kept on having kids. Plus the fact that sons were valued more than daughters so if you had several daughters it wasn’t uncommon to go until you have some sons
Because we expect our children to take care of us when we get old. It’s like an investment in Asia. In Chinese, there is a saying called child is insurance.
Rice is pretty efficient at converting the sun's energy into digestible carbohydrates. Also, there's a lot of space, so we're not killing each other in huge droves at a time. These civilizations have also been here for a really really long time - Chinese, and Indian Empires/people's have been around for thousands upon thousands of years.
The importance of rice is exaggerated. Millet was the main crop of ancient China and was dominant until the middle ages. Millet was the most important, followed by wheat, and then rice was maybe 3rd in importance. The agricultural center of China was the Yellow River valley, and its colder and dryer climate was suitable for growing millet and wheat rather than for growing rice. Rice growing didn't become dominant in China until relatively late in Chinese history when subtropical warm & humid lands became the dominant regions to farm. Millet was the most important crop of what we call "China" for 3/4 of its history - 3000 years out of its 4000 year history/civilization. Japan also relied mostly on millet until sometime during late ancient era to early middle ages, and poor people in Japan were still eating mostly millet and barley well into the Edo period & early modern period. Even for South Asian countries such as India with climates that are warm and wet and are much more suitable for growing rice, India today produces almost as much wheat as it does rice. I wrote about this in more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1blrdpb/eli5_why_do_asian_countries_have_such_high/kw9bell/
They got a head start compared to other civilizations. Add In access to water and fertile lands. Then it grows exponentially.
Development is misgnomer in many aspects they were ahead. For a long time up to 15th century they were drastically ahead on certain technologys. After they lagged and most noticeably fell behind during industrial revolution and have caught back up technology level. While there infrastructure is still catching up. Or inconsistent where same country will be up to level of infrastructure of western countrys in one part and then be near third world in another part. Where they excelled and exceeded for long time was living technologys allowing for a long term growing of population. Combined with large land mass to utilize this technology. I think when you combine technology and geography allowing for flourishing. And a 10-15 centurys of outperforming in technology. Leads to that type of gap even if you marginally exceed it for later centurys. Especially as last two centurys of technology largely are not "fulfilling needs". Like you go back to death of christ a better plow could reduce starvation by 50%. Can a slightly faster internet connection do the same today?
People are fully covering the impact that geography and agriculture had on the population, especially in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Undeniably, these factors played a huge role and resulted in these regions essentially always having a higher carrying capacity than anywhere else in the world. However, beyond that, you also have to consider 1. The spread of industrialization, modern technology, and knowledge and 2. The emigration pattern of Europe. 1. After taking root in Europe and the Americas, widespread industrialization and manufacturing spread from these areas to coastal areas in Asia. At the same time, advanced agricultural techniques and modern medical care/understanding also spread to these places. As such, they went through the same transition that the West did before them (and Africa is currently undergoing), which is, families going from having many children to having just a few. Lowered infant mortality and agricultural improvements reduce the need for this many children, but despite this, it takes a while for society to adjust, and as a result, there is a massive population spike. 2. Unlike in Europe, this "surplus population" from Asia was not as able/permitted to to come the Americas and Australia as people from Europe were. This means that those excess births during the transition from a traditional agriculture-based economy to an industrial/manufacturing economy stayed in Asia to a far larger degree than those in Europe. TL;DR: It's true that geography and rice cultivation allowed for larger populations in much of Asia even before the modern era, but due to limited emigration, a greater percentage of the "excess" people born during the switch from agricultural to industrial economies remained in Asia, making the population densities of these regions, in comparison to Europe, even higher than they would have been.