I. Plate tectonics and big religions

I. Plate tectonics and big religions

Eric R. Force

Back about 2005, as I was preparing a paper comparing plate-tectonic boundaries with originating sites of ancient complex cultures, my former colleague Henry Spall at US Geological Survey pointed out that a similar case could be made for the originating sites of world religions.  I did not include his information in Force (2008) but it gains urgency as evidence of links between religiousity and tectonic activity emerge (Bentzen in press) and as the evolution of big religions is addressed (e.g. Norenzayan et al. 2016).   It seems possible that tectonic activity catalyzed religious change to begin this evolution.

            In this posting I will compare the big religions of today via their originating sites to the plate tectonic environments of those sites.  I keep my information base obvious and accessible, using Wikipedia where possible.

Table 1 compares today’s religions numbering adherents over a million (from Wikipedia for 2018), with the tectonic environments of the originating sites for each, listed as distance to the nearest plate-tectonic boundary. For plate boundaries I mostly use data from Force (2008) as in figure 1; these include transcurrent, spreading, and collisional boundaries.  Because seismic activity is related to plate boundaries, it should also be possible to do this analysis using seismic risk.

Taking an unweighted arithmetic average of site-distances from table 1 gives 239 km, a remarkably small average distance on a globe with thousands of kilometers of distance available for founding religions.  Indeed these originating sites form a cluster around tectonic boundaries that represent only 5.6 percent of the available land in the eastern hemisphere alone.  (Even if the distance for Confucian/Tao had been listed as 1500 km, the average would still be only 251 km; see note with table 1). 

We could calculate the chance that the distribution is random (as I did in 2008 for ancient complex cultures), but perhaps the reader can accept that this chance would be one in several million.  Regardless of causes, there is a strong spatial association of active plate tectonic boundaries with religious origination. 

Perusing table 1 also gives one the impression that religions with the most adherents originated closest to tectonic boundaries.  An average weighted by number of adherents is called for.  Dividing the product of adherents and distance by the number of adherents gives 75.7 km for the average adherent-distance for originating sites, a much smaller distance confirming that religions with the most adherents tended to originate closest to plate-tectonic boundaries.  It’s clear from figure 1 and table 1 that the northern margin of the Indian plate and the western margin of the Arabian plate were the locus of origination of disproportionately many religions, and those with many adherents. 

Table 1.—Plate tectonic positions of world religions’ originating sites, ranked by number of adherents by Wikipedia (2018). Notes: Omitted from the Wikipedia list are Irreligious, ethnic/indigenous, African indigenous, spiritism, and neopagan, i.e. religious categories that are composite and have no single origin.  Similarly Zorastrianism is omitted from calculations due to lack of definite origination site; plate boundaries Af, African; Ar, Arabian; In, Indo-Australian; Ea, Eurasian; Po, Philippine and Okhotsk plates; 3. Hastinapura taken for the coalescence of the religious traditions that became Vedic Hinduism, 4. Bodh Gaya is traditional but most sites such as Kushinagar are about 110 km.  That is, Gautama’s spiritual journeys and observations were in tectonically active terrain but enlightenment was more quiescent, 5. Confucianism and other traditional Chinese religions are thought to have been codified in Zhou times in their capital.  The distance listed is that to the Altyn Tagh-Qinling fault system, a proto-plate boundary as discussed in Force (2015).  Otherwise the listed distance would be about 1500 km.

Rank and name	Adherents (million)	Originating site	Distance to boundary (approx km)	Plate boundary
1. Christian	2400	Jordan Valley	0	Af-Ar
2. Muslim	1800	Mecca	100	Af-Ar
3. Hindu	1150	Hastinapura	100	In-Ea
4. Buddhist	521	Kushinagar	110	In-Ea
5. Tao/Confucian	394	Zhou	300	(see note)
6. Sikh	30	Kartarpur	0	In-Ea
7. Judaism	14.4	Jordan Valley	0	Af-Ar
8. Bahai	7	Acre/Haifa	60	Af-Ar
9. Jain	4.2	Patna	160	In-Ea
10. Shinto	4.0	ca. Kyoto?	500	Po-Ea
11. Cao Dai	4.0	Tay Ninh	1300	In-Ea
12. Zoroastrian	2.6(?)	unknown	n.a.

            Of course many of the religions listed here now occupy huge tracts of tectonically quiescent continents.  The current distribution of Christianity, for example, would bear little resemblance to plate-tectonic boundaries, indeed several religions have migrated away from their origination sites.

            My use of the Wikipedia list for a metric (and probably any such list) obscures great complexities— list-aggregated religions each with many adherents, religions so fractured that their adherents are shooting at each other, etc.  A more sophisticated treatment seems warranted in view of the strength of my simple analysis.

            An explanation for the correspondence between religious origination and tectonic activity is beyond this posting.  The most basic question is—what catalyzes a perceived need for a new religion?

 I intend to explore converse approaches and textual materials for this question in future postings. There are potential difficulties for separating complex cultures and their religions that can be addressed with converse approaches, and texts can reveal the dynamics of religious evolution.  For this posting it seems sufficient to note that my analysis was prompted by current work (Bentzen, in press)—and abundant examples (reviewed by Force 2015)-- on links between religious and seismic activity.

            This posting (on Tectonic Environments of Ancient Cultures,  at https://tectonic-culture.blogspot.com/  ) can be edited, and I intend to do so as comments come in.  Respondents from a variety of disciplines may be interested and have something to add.  Additions to the original posting benefitted (so far) from J. S. Bentzen, Wayne Howell, E. Charles Adams, Gary Huckleberry, E. H. (Ned) Brown, Claudio Vita-Finzi, David Gilman Romano, Lars Fogelin, Johan Elverskog, and David Soren.  Responsibility remains mine.  Additional suggestions are welcome.

Figure 1.--Locations of originating sites of major world religions (numbered as in table 1) relative to tectonic plate boundaries on or near land, modified from Force (2008).  P and O are the Philippine and Okhotsk plates respectively.

           

References

Bentzen, J. S., in press, Acts of God?  Religiousity and natural disasters across subnational world districts:  The Economic Journal.

(already available at http://web.econ.ku.dk/bentzen/BentzenReligiosityDisasters.pdf)

Force, E. R., 2008, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:  Geoarchaeology v. 23, p. 644-653.

-----, 2015, Impact of tectonic activity on ancient civilizations:  Lexington

Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A.Z., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R.A., and Slingerland, E., 2016, The cultural evolution of prosocial religions:  Behavioral and Brain Sciences, v. 39, p. 1-65.