Five traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, together account for most of the world's religious believers today. How did they end up where they are? The short animated map below, produced by Alex Kuzoian for Business Insider in July 2015, compresses several thousand years of that story into about two minutes, showing each faith spreading out from its birthplace through conquest, missionary work, trade and simple word of mouth.
Watch it first, then use the guide below to fill in what the colours cannot show: where each religion began, the turning points that carried it across continents, and why a coloured map is only a rough sketch of what people actually believed.
The five religions at a glance
According to the Pew Research Center's 2025 report on changes between 2010 and 2020, there were about 2.3 billion Christians (roughly 29% of humanity), 2.0 billion Muslims (about 26%), 1.2 billion Hindus (about 15%), 300 million Buddhists (about 4%) and some 10 to 15 million Jews, depending on how Jewish identity is counted. Older figures, such as the "950 million Hindus" often quoted around the time this video appeared, are now out of date.
Counting believers is harder than it sounds. Some countries, including the United States and France, do not ask about religion in their census, and surveys differ on whether to count cultural background, regular practice or simple self-identification.
Hinduism: no single founder
Hinduism grew out of beliefs and rituals on the Indian subcontinent over many centuries, with roots usually dated to the second millennium BCE. It has no single founder or founding date, which is why it is often described as the oldest of the major living religions. Its spread beyond India was largely carried by trade and courtly culture rather than conquest. The clearest monument to that reach is Angkor Wat in Cambodia, built by the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the first half of the 12th century and dedicated to the god Vishnu, before it gradually became a Buddhist temple.
Buddhism: a royal patron and the Silk Road
Buddhism began with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama in the 5th century BCE, in the region of present-day Nepal and northern India. Its first great boost came from the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (c. 304–232 BCE). After his bloody conquest of Kalinga around 260 BCE, his own edicts record remorse and a turn towards dhamma, or righteous conduct. Sri Lankan chronicles say his son Mahinda carried Buddhism to Sri Lanka, though some historians question that account. So yes, for a time Buddhism enjoyed royal sponsorship, but it was never forced on Ashoka's subjects in the way later state religions sometimes were.
From there, monks and merchants carried it along the Silk Road. Contact with China grew in the 2nd century CE, the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo adopted Buddhism as a state religion in 372 CE, and it later reached Japan from Korea and China, and Tibet by the 8th century.
Judaism: a faith shaped by exile
Judaism took shape in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Its geography was transformed by forced movement: the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 586 BCE sent many people into exile in Mesopotamia, and the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, followed by the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 CE, scattered Jewish communities across the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Over centuries they formed distinct traditions, such as the Ashkenazi communities of central and eastern Europe and the Sephardic communities of Iberia and the Arab world. Today the largest Jewish populations live in Israel and the United States.
Christianity: from a Jewish sect to an imperial faith
Did Christianity develop out of Judaism? Yes. It began in Judaea around 30 CE among followers of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, and early missionaries such as Paul took the message to non-Jewish communities around the eastern Mediterranean. Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity, in 301 (some sources say 314). In the Roman Empire, the Edict of Milan in 313 ended persecution, and in 380 Nicene Christianity became the empire's official religion. Missionaries then converted much of Europe over the following centuries, and the colonial era later carried the faith to the Americas, Africa and parts of Asia.
Islam: conquest first, conversion later
Islam began in the Hejaz region of western Arabia around 610 CE with the revelations to the Prophet Muhammad. Within a century of his death in 632, Arab armies had built an empire from Iberia to Central Asia. Yet historians stress that conquest and conversion were different things. The new rulers wanted political and economic control, and the historian Richard Bulliet estimated that the Muslim share of the population in some conquered lands rose gradually, reaching a large majority only by around the 11th century. Elsewhere, Islam travelled with merchants and Sufi teachers rather than soldiers: across the Sahara to towns such as Timbuktu, down the Swahili coast of East Africa, and along sea routes to Sumatra, Malacca and Java. Indonesia, which was never conquered by an Arab army, is today the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.
What a coloured map cannot show
An animated map is a brilliant starting point, but each block of colour hides a lot. Areas painted one colour often held large minorities: Jewish and Christian communities across the Islamic world, Muslims in India, Buddhists and Hindus side by side in Southeast Asia. Traditions also borrowed from each other and from local beliefs, and the speed of the animation can make change look sudden when it often took centuries. Use the video as a timeline to explore, not as a final word on who believed what.
Sources: Business Insider: Animated map shows how religion spread around the world (YouTube); Wikipedia: Major religious groups (Pew 2025 figures); Angkor Wat; Ashoka; Silk Road transmission of Buddhism; Jewish diaspora; Spread of Christianity; Spread of Islam.
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