ABSTRACT
European and Old World human beings, domesticated animals, varmints, pathogens, and weeds accomplish demographic takeovers in the temperate, well-watered regions of North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Europeans and their descendants, who comprise the majority of human beings in North America and in a number of other lands outside of Europe are among the most spectacularly successful overseas migrants of all time. None of the major groupings of humankind is as oddly distributed about the world as European, especially Western European, whites. The demographic triumph of Europeans in the temperate colonies is one part of a biological and ecological takeover that could not have been accomplished by human beings alone, gunpowder notwithstanding. In the cooler lands, the colonies of the demographic takeover, Europeans achieved very rapid population growth by means of immigration, by increased life span, and by maintaining very high birth rates.
