Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: Hannah LS on 11/12/2018 09:16:44
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Nigel asks:
If the cradle of mankind is in Africa, why is the population of South and East Africa so small? And why does China and India have more than about 1 billion more people than the the next country USA (which only has about 350 million)? All these countries have had wars and famines etc. Why are population sizes by country so variable?
What do you think?
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Population density is the thing you wish to look at
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Lots of the islands are heavily populated, japan and the uk ranking highly.
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Climate is a major factor - not too many deserts are heavily populated, such as the Sahara, much of Australia and all of Antarctica.
But it has not always been this way - apparently the Sahara region was covered by extensive vegetation during the last ice age.
Warfare and disease burden also limits population density.
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I would say it's a combination of several things. Modern medicine, the Haber Bosch process (nitrogen) that allow us to grow more food, old traditions where you prepared for the future by making lots of kids, as so many died before growing up, and where boys was what was expected to bring home the money to family and relatives. Then there is religious aspects too of course, as banning condoms. The developing countries still have old values ingrained in them whereas country's from where the industrial revolution came show a different population trend. Traditions can be very slow to change.
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The definition of a country is not logical or mathematical, nor even is the distribution of population within that country. Dubai is an interesting example, where the population density of the capital is at least 100 times that of the surrounding countryside, and incidentally the census shows 3 times as many male residents as females - how did that happen?
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The definition of a country is not logical or mathematical
I was talking to my granddaughter on her way to school, and mentioned that the Vatican was a nation in its own right.
After describing the size of the Vatican as being about the size of our local shopping mall+carparks, she was astonished - "That can't be a country!".
Her understanding of a country was something that was divided up into states....
We then got into Lichtenstein, Luxemburg, Monaco and some Pacific Island nations...
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Topol (the original star of Fiddler on the Roof) opened a BBC documentary on Israel with the memorable statement:
"If you look at a map, Israel is smaller than Yorkshire. If you look at a newspaper, it's bigger than Russia."
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The modern Vatican state was created in 1929 the same year that I was.
It was created the much maligned Benito Mussolini.
Sorry for the ambiguous English I missed out on a proper education due to the war and my
Italian ancestry and was only trained as technical factory fodder
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The modern Vatican state was created in 1929 the same year as me by the much maligned Benito Mussolini.
I didn't realise you were created by Mussolini.
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The odd stop or comma can be very important religious fanatics have gone to the stake for such reasons.
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3 times as many male residents as females - how did that happen?
The Arab women are too sensible to live there...?
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Much of the population is foreign workers little more than slaves that do not have family with them.