Why Most Humans Live Inside This Small Circle

this video is made possible by hellofresh go to hellofresh.com and use the code reallifelore16 to get 16 free meals including free shipping here's question for you to think about what is the smallest circle that you can create on the earth's surface that has more people living within it than outside of it for moment you may be tempted to place the center of your circle in the middle of times square in new york city after all more than 300 000 people will walk through this square every single day the epicenter of an urban area with more than 20 million people and the beating heart of the world's most powerful country the new york city metropolitan area has more people within it than 70 of the world's countries do and so you'd be pretty forgiven for thinking that it's at the epicenter of the world's population and yet despite all of that it's really nowhere near the true center of the world which is arguably over on the other side of the planet here at monket burma this is relatively small town of only about 40 000 people and it's rarely visited by any tourists and yet if you drew out circle from here with radius of 3 300 kilometers with monket precisely in the center you will find that this is actually the smallest circle you could create that contains more people inside of it than outside of it this fascinating phenomenon was first realized back in 2013 when reddit user going by the name of valerie pyrus and known in real life as ken myers posted very similar map with very similar idea that looked like this rather than monket this map was centered instead over the south china sea and with only 4 000 kilometer radius it only included parts of 21 countries and was shockingly small excluding the entirety of europe north america south america africa australia and even most of asia entire massive countries like the united states brazil egypt and russia were nearly entirely left out and as result the claim spread like wildfire throughout the internet and news media ever since the claim has been backed up by nearly everyone from the washington post to professors from the london school of economics so how does the math all break down well for starters the circle includes the entirety of china and india the world's two most populous countries that when combined are home to 2.8 billion people and more than 35 of the entire human population already on their own china and india combined have more people than the entirety of africa europe north america and australia all combined but there's many more highly populated areas within the circle than that most of pakistan is included with her 225 million people bangladesh adds 172 million japan adds another 125 million the philippines adds further 111 million vietnam another 98 million the korean peninsula another 77 million while the islands of chava sumatra and borneo all add together another insane 220 million the small island of java alone roughly the same size as the us state of louisiana is the world's most populated island with nearly 148 million people calling it home which is higher population than the entirety of russia all crammed together on an island that's smaller than louisiana but what's also fascinating is that the circle also includes lot of empty areas too it includes nearly the entirety of mongolia the world's most sparsely populated country where on average you'll only find two people for every square kilometer of land it also includes tibet and xinjiang within china two areas that when combined have very similar land area to the entirety of india but only being home to less than 30 million people further the circle contains even more water than actual land which of course is empty and then besides just for the astonishing fact of its existence the circle has many other mind-blowing aspects to it as well for one there are many more hindus buddhists and muslims within the circle than there are outside of it for hindus and buddhists that makes lot of sense but for muslims it's pretty shocking because the circle excludes the entirety of the middle east and the arab world areas that are more often considered to be the epicenters of the islamic faith this is largely because of the enormous muslim populations of just four countries that are largely within the circle indonesia pakistan india and bangladesh which when all combined are home to nearly 800 billion muslims which is nearly twice the number of muslims who live across the entire middle east and north africa the indian state of udar pradesh alone has muslim population of only about 19 but that's still nearly 44 million muslims and is higher muslim population than any muslim-majority country in the world besides for indonesia pakistan bangladesh egypt iran and turkey further china has more muslims than the entirety of syria and when you add them in along with the tens of millions of other muslims within the circle across malaysia and the philippines you easily get to figure of more muslims living within the circle than outside of it making southern and southeast asia the real epicenters of the islamic population in 2015 the valerie pyrus claim was verified by london school of economics professor of economics and international development danny hua but quoi was interested in pushing the experiment even further beyond myers's original idea he found that not only was valipires correct but that if he adjusted the placement of the circle just little bit he could actually shrink it while having the inside of the circle still contain half of the world's population when doing this he gave his new circle smaller 3 300 kilometer radius surrounding the burmese township monket henceforth making monket the physical center of most of the world's population qua's new map placed atop 3d globe is even more fascinating half of the people in the entire world living right now are all inside of this small circle and unlike the old map it almost entirely excludes japan as well the world's 11th most populous nation but the existence of the circle only begs another question how did most of the world's population end up being inside of it well the circle is centered over large part of asia and this is where the majority of the human population has been now for thousands of years at least as far back as 1000 bce the closest that any other continent has come so far in the past 3000 years to asia's population was europe at the turn of the 20th century and even then europe's total population was only 43 percent of asia's total population fast forward 120 years to the present and that percentage has shrunk down to less than 17 of asia's population today even if you go all the way back to 1700 india and china alone accounted for little more than half of the entire world's population with more than 105 million people each and over the three centuries of history since both have added more than one billion additional people so for about the past 3000 years this small circle that contains the majority of humanity has remained more or less constant in the same general location despite both adding more than billion people to their populations however both india and china have been growing at more or less the exact same rate as the rest of the world over the past 300 years that trend ultimately means that both india and china have so many more people than any other country today because they had so many more people than any other country did 300 years ago as well in short they simply had much larger head start than any other country did but like okay that doesn't really answer anything the real question is why did they have so many more people than anywhere else 300 years ago the big two answers to that question are land and food china and india measured by land are both massive places and they both have large rivers that flow across easy to farm planes modern india has more arable land than any other country in the world and unsurprisingly china has the fourth highest amount behind russia in the united states the reason why china had more people than either of those countries 300 years ago though is that russia has bit of problem with the cold and they mostly can't grow crops year-round while the united states just simply didn't exist yet so once again china simply had bigger head start with thousands of years of farming and development over both russia and the united states all of this arable land combined with the ability to grow crops on it year round enabled both indian and chinese civilization to simply be able to plant more farms than anywhere else which meant more villagers which meant more farms which meant more villagers and so on and the crop that these places were primarily growing was rice which when compared to other popular grains like wheat contains significantly more calories per acre for most of human history and then even into the present the most popular grain that was grown across the middle east and europe was wheat which only produces about four million calories per acre that means that for every acre of farmland growing wheat civilization could only feed little more than six citizens year conversely rice generates more like 11 million calories per acre which means that when civilization uses rice every acre they use can feed more like 16 people the choice between wheat and rice is obvious for population growth when civilizations choose rice as china and india and the other countries of eastern southeast asia have their acres of farmland can simply sustain more people than the civilizations who choose to farm wheat and when they have the first and fourth highest amount of available farmland in the world and they have the climate to farm year round it's not exactly hard to figure out why they've literally always had the highest number of people and will continue having the highest number of people for very very long time higher source of calories in the form of rice over thousands of years is one of the major reasons for the higher population of asia today and on personal level having easy access to good healthy food is one of the primary factors to living good life ordering great tasting food via delivery or takeout is definitely easy but with all those fees added on by the apps it becomes pretty expensive to have food delivered straight to your door but many of us still do because it's simply convenient definitely did until realized how poor it was for my health for my wallet and for the environment therefore eventually switched to using hellofresh now just go to hellofresh's website choose from list of 50 weekly menu items pick what want and then the following week box arrives on my doorstep with all the ingredients and recipes for example this week made the home style chicken and biscuit pot pie which was pretty quick to make since all the ingredients came in the exact right quantities and it was also delicious and to be honest i've been using hellofresh for nearly year now 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