180,000 Years of Faith Charted on a “Histomap” in 1943

For lots of, even maximum people mod­erns, the cen­tral reli­gious selection is a sim­ple one: adhere to the realization sys­tem through which you grew up, or prevent adher­ing to it. However when you sur­vey the vari­ety of reli­gions on this planet, the take a seat­u­a­tion not turns out somewhat so bina­ry; when you then upload the vari­ety of reli­gions that experience exist­ed via­out human his­to­ry, it begins glance­ing down­proper kalei­do­scop­ic. Or fairly, it appears some­factor just like the faint­ly psy­che­del­ic but in addition infor­ma­tion-rich His­tom­ap of Reli­gion above, cre­at­ed in 1943 by means of chemist John B. Sparks, whom we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture for his orig­i­nal His­tom­ap depict­ing 4,000 Years of Global His­to­ry and his sub­se­quent His­tom­ap of Evo­lu­tion.

The Use­fulCharts video underneath explains Sparks’ His­tom­ap of Reli­gion intimately, however it additionally cites his His­tom­ap of Evo­lu­tion, an examination­ple of ways his global­view fails to align with cur­hire consistent with­cep­tions of those sub­jects. Even the brand new­er His­tom­ap of Reli­gion is by means of now greater than 80 years outdated, dur­ing which period schol­ar­send in reli­gion and relat­ed fields has made cer­tain dis­cov­er­ies and clar­i­fi­ca­tions that nec­es­sar­i­ly move unre­flect­ed in Sparks’ paintings. However when you endure this in thoughts whilst glance­ing on the His­tom­ap of Reli­gion, you’ll nonetheless achieve a brand new and use­ful consistent with­spec­tive on how the ideals that mankind has held prime­est have modified and inter­min­gled over the mil­len­nia.

The chart starts in pre­his­to­ry, divid­ing the then-extant faiths into the cat­e­gories “magazine­ic and fetishism,” “tabu and totemism,” “ances­tor wor­send,” “trib­al gods and divine kings,” “professional­pi­ti­a­tion of nature spir­its,” and “fer­til­i­ty cults.” Despite the fact that Sparks’ infor­ma­tion would possibly at the complete be “in line with the­o­ries concerning the ori­gins of reli­gion that have now been both reject­ed or a minimum of seri­ous­ly revised,” explains Use­fulCharts cre­ator Matt Bak­er, “the gen­er­al concepts expressed by means of those six varieties are nonetheless some­what legitimate.” The expan­sion and con­trac­tion of adher­ence to a lot of these ear­ly reli­gion via time are mirror­ed by means of adjustments within the width of the col­ored columns that rep­re­despatched them. Fol­low those columns down­ward via his­to­ry, and new, extra famil­iar reli­gions emerge: Tao­ism, Judaism, Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Chris­tian­i­ty each Catholic and Protes­tant.

There­after come oth­er transfer­ments and fig­ures consistent with­haps now not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­in a position as reli­gious in nature: “human­ism,” for examination­ple, whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives come with Shake­speare and Rousseau. Lat­er, the information of Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­als Vis­sar­i­on Belin­sky and Alexan­der Herzen department off to develop into, after a couple of cen­tu­ry, the “cor­rupt phi­los­o­phy” of com­mu­nism, with its “God-less professional­pa­gan­da” sup­port­ing a “police state aimed toward global dom­i­na­tion.” Bak­er gadgets that, if Sparks counts com­mu­nism as a reli­gion, then certain­ly he must depend cap­i­tal­ism as a reli­gion as neatly. This can be a fair-enough level, despite the fact that behold this dense chart of “cults, faiths, and eth­i­cal philoso­phies” lengthy sufficient, and also you’ll begin to received­der if each­factor human­i­ty has ever performed isn’t, in some sense, ulti­mate­ly reli­gious in nature.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Map Displays How the 5 Primary Reli­gions Unfold Around the Global (3000 BC — 2000 AD)

The Tree of Lan­guages Illus­trat­ed in a Giant, Beau­ti­ful Data­graph­ic

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Nice His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Maximum Influ­en­tial Data­graph­ics Ever (1769)

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­performed in a 5‑Foot-Lengthy “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Data­graph­ic) From 1931

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Lengthy Data­graph­ic from 1931

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and vast­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns, the e book The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video sequence The Town in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.