History of religion in 90 seconds
Maps of War has a library of 90-second Flash videos that show expansion and contraction of empires and religions over the centuries. The history of religion is a good one to start with.
How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? Our map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!Link (Thanks, Rodney!)
the latest
latest episodes
They assign all of China to Buddhism, ignoring Confucianism and Taoism.
Also, there were long periods where lands under Muslim rule were mostly non-Muslim (particularly in eastern Europe and India), so I guess this is a map of what the rulers believed (except that doesn't work either, since the Mongol conquest isn't depicted).
The map is a wee bit simplistic and ignores China and Japan.
I suppose if you still ignore China and Japan it could be a map of state acknowledged major religions over the last few thousand years. But then you'd expect at least a smattering of small dots for the Jewish diaspora. This map has Judaism completely disappear until the founding of Israel.
Cute how there's no religion before Krishna. It's all blank and stuff. And large swaths of Africa are animist to this day, which I guess counts as Christian now.
This is like charting the rise and spread of the internet by following only five companies. Seriously, it's a lot of non-information.
What happened to the Roman Empire? The Gauls? Egypt? The Taoists? The indigenous religions of the Americas, China, and Africa? This "map" has so many inaccuracies and omissions its hard to know where to start.
I love how Christiananity looks like an atomic bomb going off at the end there.
LOL@organized religion
Faulting the map for not including every religion in the world is not fair. A map of four religions you can follow. One of 30 religions, you cannot. There are, however, certain inaccuracies, like the fact that they have Christianity coming to Ethiopia in roughly 1800 CE rather than 300-400 CE. That said, it's still an interesting illustration of the history.
Keith
Just a few words...
I agree with Yamara and Dillenger69 and most of the other users. *The map is simplified to such a degree so as to render it completely meaningless.*
The most glaring error I see is lack of representation of the huge Jewish Diaspora throughout the world (the United States, throughout the Mediterranean region, in Europe, China, Russia, to name just a few). Also, the Muslims in Spain lived together for a time with “Jews” and “Christians” (actually, Latin Rite Catholics) creating a religious melting pot that made Spain an epicenter of philosophy, art, literature, theology and the natural sciences, for example. That's one problem with the map, that it shows them as diverse groups.
Furthermore, there was, and still is, a great deal of intermixture and mutual redefining of religious value systems from region to region and from group to group.
Also, to refer to all of the various directions of Islam simply as "Islam"--like the map’s authors do--is to do such a rich and varied religion a great disservice; just like calling all Christians simply "Christian," all Hindus simply "Hindus," all Jewish people simply "Judaism,” all Buddhists simply “Buddhism” and so on and so forth (all of these religions have rich and varied histories). This is a really complex issue, and such labels are nothing else other than a crass oversimplification, indicative of a childish mindset which would prefer to think of the inherently complex expansion of ideas and faiths taking place on a interpersonal and cultural level as constituting a mere physical, territorial expansion.
Best look toward maps that show ethnic groups, social classes, self-constituted tribes, etc. etc. throughout time to determine how ideas have “spread,” if at all. Looking at this map is kind of looking at that dichromatic map of the Gore-Bush election where the entire country looks red. But, as soon as you look at the populations of the various regions it becomes clear that it is about territory and not population. The other sort of looking requires more thought and it does not fit so nicely on any map without first requiring a great stretch of the imagination.
Also, one more bone to pick, calling the United States a “Christian” nation is a fairly loaded designation. There is no established religion in the United States. I don’t mean to say that it doesn’t operate under Christian principles or anything like that, or that there isn't a majority of population who self-identify as such, but there is just such a plurality of religious groups with different degrees of strength of belief varying from person to person in the United States that it just doesn’t make sense to say, “Oh, the United States, that’s a purely Christian country in every way, shape and form.”
Also, a lot of territories painted as being one religion or the other are disputed boundaries throughout the world as well, making this map politically very contentious to a lot of groups. This map is dangerous stuff, but without any redeeming value. The entire history of the human race as it expresses itself through religion should never be summarized in ninety seconds.
This map is fuel for the fire for those people who like to indulge in sweeping, counterproductive generalizations.
...it's also totally derivative of the brilliant 1976 film by the Eames Office -- "Atlas".