[Replication package for] Reconstructing history: Using language to estimate religious spread
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Julian Dyer, University of Exeter; Arthur Blouin, University of Toronto
Version: View help for Version V1
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Unknown | 151 KB | 06/02/2022 02:18:AM |
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application/zip | 4.7 GB | 06/16/2025 12:52:PM |
Project Citation:
Dyer, Julian, and Blouin, Arthur. [Replication package for] Reconstructing history: Using language to estimate religious spread. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-06-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/E233003V1
Project Description
Summary:
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This is the replication package for "Reconstructing history: Using language to estimate religious spread" Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic History, December 2025 issue.
We introduce a data-driven approach to use language to reconstruct history, and apply the methodology to estimate the geographic origins of religious spread. To validate the approach, we use language data to estimate origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of their true (and uncontested) origins. We then apply the methodology to the more complex (and contested) cases of Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. We show that language-based estimates, in these cases, are significantly more aligned with the origin of scripture than to the origin of the religion.
We introduce a data-driven approach to use language to reconstruct history, and apply the methodology to estimate the geographic origins of religious spread. To validate the approach, we use language data to estimate origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of their true (and uncontested) origins. We then apply the methodology to the more complex (and contested) cases of Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. We show that language-based estimates, in these cases, are significantly more aligned with the origin of scripture than to the origin of the religion.
Scope of Project
Subject Terms:
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Economic History;
Cultural Economics
Geographic Coverage:
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Global
Universe:
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All languages catalogues in the PanLex dataset, with additional restrictions on coverage in other lexical and linguistic datasets.
Data Type(s):
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geographic information system (GIS) data;
images: photographs, drawings, graphical representations;
program source code;
text
Collection Notes:
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Contains raw data and replication code that will generate the original predicted loanwords data, as well as the topic clustering and network construction. This also includes the code to produce network measures, solve for predicted origins, and aggregate these predicted origins.
Methodology
Data Source:
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Please see published article for full details on data sources and how they were used.
Unit(s) of Observation:
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Neighbouring language-pair,
Language
Geographic Unit:
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Ethnolinguistic group as recorded in Ethnologue
Related Publications
Published Versions
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