Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. … Despite claiming ancient origins and ultimate authority, all five major religions in the world are recent vintages compared to human existence on Earth for over hundreds of thousands of years. During most of our prehistoric times, religious beliefs and practices were largely localized and limited to the territorial or tribal boundaries of individual groups.
For the people of the British Isles A thousand years agofor example, the Levant could be another planet. How did Britain become one of the most enthusiastic global evangelicals from Palestine hundreds of years later? How about Buddhism, an Indian sect that appears to have started with one man in the 5th century BC, became the dominant religion in all Asia just a few hundred years later?
Answer such questions in detail is the business of a professional historian. But we know a wide range of overviews. The world’s major religions spread through empire conquest and forced conversion. Through cultural exchange of ideas and adaptation of distant beliefs in local customs, practices and rituals. It travels around the world through immigrant and diaspora communities. We know that religion was transmitted by travelling through trade routes across land and sea, and copying in painstaking translations and long Bibles of hand.
All of these movements are also movements in the modern globalized world, a structure that took shape thousands of years ago. The spread of religion in the “Big 5” now corresponds to the shift in the human masses around the world, whether we like it or not, to form an interconnected connection that will now bring us all together.
In the animated map above of Business Insider, you can see these five faith movements over the course of 5,000 years and see in just over two minutes how the modern world was formed. And you may wonder yourself: what would such a map look like in another 5,000 years? Or at 500? Do all these global religions merge into one? Will they wither? Will they split into thousands? Our speculation reveals a lot about what we think will happen to humanity in the future.
Note: Previous versions of this post were published on our site in 2018.
Related content:
World religions explained in useful charts: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, etc.
Visual maps of the world’s major religions (and secular)
Animation introductions to five major religions in the world: Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam
Free Online Religion Courses
Josh Jones He is a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
