Language Data for Estimating Religious Spread Origins

This replication package supports a study on using language data to reconstruct the geographic origins of religious spread. The methodology was validated by estimating the origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of their true origins. It was then applied to the more contested cases of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism.

Use Cases

• Apply the described methodology to estimate the geographic origins of Islam and Buddhism using language data.
• Use the data-driven approach to analyze language-based estimates for the origins of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism.
• Validate the alignment of language-based estimates with the origin of scripture versus the origin of the religion for contested cases.

Strengths

• Methodology validated by estimating origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of true origins.
• Associated with a forthcoming publication in the Journal of Economic History, December 2025 issue.
• Data supports analysis of five major world religions: Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism.

Limitations

• Specific data structure, column names, and sample size are unknown.
• The core data may be primarily linguistic, limiting direct demographic or economic analysis.
• The replication package's completeness and ease of use for independent replication are not detailed.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Replication package for a published academic study introducing a data-driven linguistic methodology.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

Global, focusing on regions relevant to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism.