I came across a video, posted by Business Insider, that shows how religions spread around the world. This video, primarily an interactive map, shows the growth of major religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and of course, Islam.
The video, in itself, has some minor flaws, such as the fact that Hinduism is shown to have originated in the Indus Valley Civilization — while the Indus Valley Civilization’s religion was slightly similar to modern-day Hinduism, it was not purely identical, and excluding a few major gods and idols, both have huge differences.
Plus, for some reason, in the spread of Buddhism, Sri Lanka seems to be neglected in the animated map. Similarly, the “rapid spread” of Islam pauses slightly before crossing Sindh (present-day Pakistan), whereas there was hardly a noticeable “pause” in the “rapid spread” of Islam at that period. Beyond that, South-east Asia is not properly highlighted when showing the spread of Islam. And finally, on a personal note, I am not too fond of the term “The Age of Discovery”.
That said, for what it’s worth, this animated map is a great representation of the geographic spread of each major religion down the ages. Watch it here:
That’s thousands of years of human history summed up in under three minutes. 🙂
Photo by Eric Fischer
New Islamicate 