Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
makeworld's posts Post Back to profile
Top-level
Mark Whybird

@elithebearded @makeworld That’s because this is a zoomed in detail view of one fork of the master repo, from just after Islam forked off from Christianity. Here’s a zoomed out view.

OTOH OP’s diagram could also be zoomed in on to see further details like baptists vs methodists and various merge attempts too. It’s pretty much a fractal that probably goes down to each individual’s beliefs, and even then noting that a single individual might hold multiple contradictory beliefs at once, which also change over time.

(Edit: see below for a more impressive, and probably more accurate (to the degree that’s possible) version)

Sorry, this is FAR too detailed a diagram to fully alt-text, but it is titled “THE EVOLUTIONARY TREE OF RELIGION (Faith, Myths & Mysticism)”, Designed By Simon E. Davies. At the bottom layer (time range 100,000 to about 70,000 BCE) is Animism. At the top (present day) are dozens of major religions, and all of Christianity is just one of them.
1 August at 10:45 | Wall-to-wall | Open on aus.social
5 comments
Martijn Faassen

@whybird

@elithebearded @makeworld

"Nostratic pantheism" sounds cool but makes the warning in this chart about it being speculative rather understated.

The Nostratic language hypothesis is already extremely speculative, let alone anything about the religion practices of those hypothesized speakers.

3 August at 11:32 | Open on fosstodon.org
Mark Whybird

@faassen @elithebearded @makeworld Your comment made me go looking to see if the chart’s designer had made any updates… and wowsers, look what I found!

Source: patreon.com/posts/all-religion

Holy moley, there are about 500 to 600 religions/faiths/sects/whatever’s in this version of the chart. It is REALLY busy. From afar, it is an amazing rainbow of lines.
3 August at 12:11 | Open on aus.social
Martijn Faassen

@whybird

@elithebearded @makeworld

Looks cool for sure! I can't find the Nostratic pantheism anymore.

I think any connections before recorded history literally spanning thousands of years are speculative at best. Though potentially cultural continuity can be inferred from material artifacts, that doesn't necessarily mean religious continuity.

Whether it even makes sense to call ancient practices a religion is debatable. It's a pretty modern term with implications that may not work

3 August at 12:26 | Open on fosstodon.org
Martijn Faassen

@whybird

@elithebearded @makeworld

In Indo European languages there are hints of shared names for divinities reflected in Greek, Roman, Germanic and Hindu pantheons. This is fascinating!

I am not sure whether such shared linguistics roots exist in other languages. Various middle eastern groups have shared mythologies too but they had continuous close cultural contacts, also shown by Greek mythology having things in common with them.

3 August at 12:33 | Open on fosstodon.org
SwindlerOfInsanity
Go Up