Animated map shows how religion spread around the world
Why History Stack Exchange recommends it
History Stack Exchange users link it to illustrate how and where major religions expanded over time when answering or asking about religious geography and relative reach.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2015 to 2021.
What it is
A short Business Insider animation that maps the geographic spread of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam across several thousand years. It shows each religion's expansion as a time-lapse on a world map, with brief on-screen text rather than detailed narration.
What people said
Recommends T.E.D. · 2021-12 · History Stack Exchange · on “Was Christianity always the #1 religion since it started, or were there others?”
Christianity wasn't really the largest world religion, in either adherents or land area culturally dominated, until fairly recently. For land area, the best way to visualize this is probably this YouTube video [this video] . Here's a screencap from the Early Middle ages: [LINK] What you should see there is that Christianity was fairly minor until it managed to covert most of Europe, which took until roughly the start of the late middle ages, and then it really took off after the "Age of Discovery" (early modern era). For number of (perhaps nominal) devotees, the best thing to look at would be one of those new animated bar graphs. Unfortunately, I was only able to find one [LINK] that goes back in
Cites spraff · 2015-07 · History Stack Exchange · on “Why was the spread of Christianity scattered compared to other major religions?”
This video [this video] of the spread of world religions makes Christianity look like an anomaly. Every other religion spreads out smoothly from a central point, growing at the edges. Christianity begins as a shotgun-splatter across Europe and grows from there. Is this an accurate portrayal, and why is it so different from the others?
Cites Yasskier · 2019-04 · History Stack Exchange · on “What was the world's largest religion in 1500?”
While not exactly answering the question regarding POPULATION, I've found this good animation created by Business Insider showing religion SPREAD through the years. [this video] If we assume (probably incorrectly) that the spread is proportional to population, then around 1500 with the conquest of the New World, Christianity would be most wide-spread religion.