Interactive Map Showing the Spread of the World's Great Religions

If you have any curiosity at all about the spread of religion over the globe, then check out this interactive map of the spread of the great religions across the globe from Maps Of War. It's fun to watch and I'm going to use it to show teach my kids about the spread and influence of religion.

There is some critique necessary. The most glaring issue is that the map doesn't allow for overlapping of religions in an area, and so it presents a picture of exclusiveness. Especially in Europe, North America, the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, there is a mixture of religions yet the map shows only one. But I suppose the makers of the map intended to portray the most dominant religion in each area.

The second criticism is that the map insinuates a lack of religion in each area until the arrival of one of the great religions that we have today. But in fact, there was lots of religion before each of these. Each of today's religions had to do away with the old beliefs, sometimes violently, before becoming dominant. But it would be too much to ask of a flash application, requiring it to document each of these old systems and when they capitulated to the new, or were integrated into it, all visually. So, the map is quite useful and probably contains more information and context than the average netizen currently knows about world religions.

Bookmark/Search this post with: