Maybe I should have put this in Romper Room, but all of the superior intellects are in here, so here it is:

My youngest daughter who is a middle school social studies teacher called me up and asked, "Why is the population of China and India so large? How did it become that way?"

My first thought was that maybe they didn't have the plagues and long term wars that killed off so many in Europe, but I really wasn't able to give her more than a speculative answer. Anybody got an explanation--serious/non-sarcastic/maybe even non-political?