Step 1: Start from the three big physically favourable belts of the world.
The most crowded parts of the world, East Asia, South Asia and Western Europe, all sit on fertile river plains or coastal lowlands with a mild climate, showing how physical geography sets the basic frame of population distribution.
Step 2: Layer economic activity on top of that physical frame.
Within those favourable physical zones, industrial belts and port cities pull even more people, since jobs concentrate population further beyond what farming alone would support.
Step 3: Add the human choices layer.
Social infrastructure like schools and hospitals, and political decisions like founding a new capital or opening land for settlement, further shift population toward or away from an area, on top of the physical and economic base.
Final Answer:
Reading distribution as layers (physical base, economic pull, then social and political choices) explains why population is bunched in fertile, industrialised, well-governed regions and thin in harsh, remote or poorly connected ones.$\boxed{\text{Layered physical, economic and political influences}}$