The chronology

Explore the overlapping histories of belief.

Search the chapters, sources and ideas behind thirty-one histories. Follow their coverage across a shared timeline, then compare the traditions that interest you.

Traditions: 31
Attestation span: 5,451
Chapters: 804
Sources cited: 2,096
Stated limits: 224

Illustrated histories Search & compare

Ancient foundations

Evidence from the ancient world: landscapes, objects, oral traditions and the institutions that carried them. Several of these histories continue into the present.

c.3500–539 BCE

Mesopotamia

The scribal school and the collated tabletWatch the narrated slideshow

A stone stair descends to a river beside a plain measuring staff, reeds and green fields.

c.3100 BCE–394 CE

Ancient Egypt

The fill-in-the-blank funerary scrollWatch the narrated slideshow

A broad river winds through open grassland, with reed margins and distant foothills.

c.1500–500 BCE

The Vedic World

Recitation with checksums — the pāṭha systemWatch the narrated slideshow

Citizens gather around bread baskets and serving dishes in a Greek stone courtyard.

c.1400 BCE–394 CE

Greece and Rome

A state-owned oracle behind a locked doorWatch the narrated slideshow

Stone houses stand beside terraced fields, storage jars and a cistern on a highland slope.

1208 BCE onward

Judaism

Scribes who count letters and log their own errorsWatch the narrated slideshow

Stepped platforms and low courtyard compounds follow a broad straight avenue beneath distant mountains.

c.1200 BCE–present

Mesoamerica and the Andes

The screenfold codex, and the khipuWatch the narrated slideshow

An irrigated green valley and a dusty path lie between broad arid hills.

c.1200 BCE onward

Zoroastrianism

An alphabet invented to freeze a dead languageWatch the narrated slideshow

A plain-clothed traveler walks away from a busy town along a shaded road beside fields.

c.700 BCE onward

Jainism

The temple manuscript libraryWatch the narrated slideshow

Three cast bronze vessels stand on a low wooden surface inside a timber hall.

551 BCE–1905 CE

Confucianism

The canon carved in stone, then the examWatch the narrated slideshow

A bent silver bar and simple weights lie beside rice at a market stall.

c.480 BCE onward

Buddhism

Reciter guilds, and group chant as error-correctionWatch the narrated slideshow

A tied bamboo-slip bundle and a loosely rolled silk sheet rest on a dark wooden surface.

4th c. BCE–present

Daoism

The parish registerWatch the narrated slideshow

Workers prepare food and carry provisions through a stone temple courtyard, with cooking vessels, baskets and a cow in afternoon light.

c.400 BCE–1500 CE

Classical Hinduism

The deed engraved in copperWatch the narrated slideshow

Reeds edge a quiet lake with submerged corroded metal objects and a distant timber hall.

c.500 BCE–1400 CE

Pagan Europe

None of its own — recorded by its conquerorsWatch the narrated slideshow

The first millennium and medieval worlds

New communities, schools and empires reshaped the religious landscape. These entries follow their distinct histories and the evidence for their transmission.

A modest plastered household room contains benches, a low table, lamps and a water jug.

30–312 CE

Early Christianity

The codexWatch the narrated slideshow

An earth-colored clay jar with a faded painted band stands beside fragile curled rolls of birch bark on cloth.

c.100 BCE onward

Mahayana Buddhism

Merit as a print runWatch the narrated slideshow

People walk between columns in a timber-roofed basilica, while builders work on scaffolding along one side.

312–1453

Imperial Christianity

The imperial postWatch the narrated slideshow

Date palms, cultivated plots, mud-brick walls and a water channel form a quiet oasis.

610–661

Islam

The standardised codex, and the memoriserWatch the narrated slideshow

Low earthen buildings and palms rise above a river quay with a moored wooden boat.

661 CE–present

Sunni and Shia

The isnad — verification by named human chainWatch the narrated slideshow

Plain-backed bronze mirrors and glass beads rest among mossy island boulders above the sea.

692 CE–present

Shinto

Transmission by demolitionWatch the narrated slideshow

Bundled scrolls fill orderly wooden shelves around a low desk in a quiet library.

c.700–750 onward

Zen

The lineage certificateWatch the narrated slideshow

A walled monastery and plain stone pillar stand in a high mountain valley.

c.779 onward

Tibetan Buddhism

A printing house that never stoppedWatch the narrated slideshow

A shaded lodge courtyard opens onto a teaching room and a kitchen with bowls and cooking pots.

8th c.–present

Sufism

The order as a franchiseWatch the narrated slideshow

A bead-making workspace contains a clay furnace, glass beads and tools beside a patterned potsherd pavement.

c.1000–1400 onward

Ifá and the Yoruba World

A binary-indexed oral databaseWatch the narrated slideshow

Print and the modern world

Print, migration, new organisations and mass media changed how traditions travelled. These histories also ask what happens when membership is no longer inherited.

A road runs through cultivated fields toward a small settlement in a broad river plain.

1469–present

Sikhism

A book that holds officeWatch the narrated slideshow

A walled town and a distant hilltop stronghold stand across fields and a river.

1517–1648

The Reformation

The pamphletWatch the narrated slideshow

People converse on benches in a Havana courtyard with wooden shutters, drums and a storage chest.

c.1500–present

The African Diaspora Religions

The mass-produced saintWatch the narrated slideshow

A shaded veranda opens onto an urban street while books and papers rest on a study table.

1828 onward

Modern Hinduism

The reform society and the printing pressWatch the narrated slideshow

A canal boat passes a small town with meetinghouses, warehouses and a towpath.

1830–1889

The Nineteenth-Century New Religions

The print run and the mailWatch the narrated slideshow

Plank benches face stacked wooden crates in a plain room with a sawdust-covered floor.

1901–present

Pentecostalism

A free newspaper, then a radio licenceWatch the narrated slideshow

A woman tends vegetables beside baskets while people follow paths between small hillside homes.

1930 onward

Rastafari

The recordWatch the narrated slideshow

A mid-century desk holds a clipboard, blank survey sheets, pencils and filing trays.

1951 onward

The Unaffiliated

The paperback that replaced the covenWatch the narrated slideshow

Search and compare the chronology

Loading the interactive chronology…

Select two to four traditions to compare the periods their books cover.

Period covered by the book Earliest secure attestation Read the full reference table

Read the overlap with care

These bars show the periods the books narrate. They do not show the full lifetime of a belief system. The dot records surviving evidence, which may be later than a tradition’s own account of its beginning.

Shared years establish overlapping coverage. Contact, influence and borrowing require their own evidence. Approximate dates and open-ended periods keep the wording of the catalogue; a shared interval is a comparison of its plotting bounds.

How the series handles evidence and uncertainty

The rule

Sorted on evidence, not on founding dates.

The obvious rule — order the volumes by when each tradition began — cannot be used. Eleven of these thirty-one have no defensible single founding date, and for several of the rest the tradition’s date and the historians’ date are centuries apart. Ordering by founding date would print eleven fictions in the contents page.

So the key is earliest secure attestation: the earliest surviving dated evidence that the tradition existed. It is a claim about evidence, never about origin, and every volume prints the tradition’s own account of its beginning beside it. How the books are written.

The eleven with no defensible founding date

Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, The Vedic World, Greece and Rome, Zoroastrianism, Classical Hinduism, Pagan Europe, Shinto, Sufism, Ifá and the Yoruba World, The African Diaspora Religions

Each of these prints the attestation-versus-tradition distinction in its front matter. It is the series’ epistemology, visible on page two.

Thirty-one traditions, by earliest secure attestation
#	Tradition	Attested from	Narrates	The machine that carried it	Pages
01	Mesopotamia	c.3500 BCE	c.3500–539 BCE	the scribal school and the collated tablet	134
02	Ancient Egypt	c.3100 BCE	c.3100 BCE–394 CE	the fill-in-the-blank funerary scroll	130
03	The Vedic World	c.1500 BCE	c.1500–500 BCE	recitation with checksums — the pāṭha system	126
04	Greece and Rome	c.1400 BCE	c.1400 BCE–394 CE	a state-owned oracle behind a locked door	132
05	Judaism	1208 BCE	1208 BCE onward	scribes who count letters and log their own errors	132
06	Mesoamerica and the Andes	c.1200 BCE	c.1200 BCE–present	the screenfold codex, and the khipu	132
07	Zoroastrianism	c.1200 BCE	c.1200 BCE onward	an alphabet invented to freeze a dead language	132
08	Jainism	c.700 BCE	c.700 BCE onward	the temple manuscript library	132
09	Confucianism	551 BCE	551 BCE–1905 CE	the canon carved in stone, then the exam	130
10	Buddhism	c.480 BCE	c.480 BCE onward	reciter guilds, and group chant as error-correction	126
11	Daoism	4th c. BCE	4th c. BCE–present	the parish register	130
12	Classical Hinduism	c.400 BCE	c.400 BCE–1500 CE	the deed engraved in copper	130
13	Pagan Europe	c.50 BCE	c.500 BCE–1400 CE	none of its own — recorded by its conquerors	128
14	Early Christianity	30 CE	30–312 CE	the codex	130
15	Mahayana Buddhism	c.100 CE	c.100 BCE onward	merit as a print run	124
16	Imperial Christianity	312 CE	312–1453	the imperial post	130
17	Islam	610 CE	610–661	the standardised codex, and the memoriser	134
18	Sunni and Shia	656 CE	661 CE–present	the isnad — verification by named human chain	126
19	Shinto	692 CE	692 CE–present	transmission by demolition	126
20	Zen	c.700 CE	c.700–750 onward	the lineage certificate	128
21	Tibetan Buddhism	c.779 CE	c.779 onward	a printing house that never stopped	128
22	Sufism	8th c. CE	8th c.–present	the order as a franchise	130
23	Ifá and the Yoruba World	c.1000 CE	c.1000–1400 onward	a binary-indexed oral database	126
24	Sikhism	1469	1469–present	a book that holds office	122
25	The Reformation	1517	1517–1648	the pamphlet	134
26	The African Diaspora Religions	18th c.	c.1500–present	the mass-produced saint	126
27	Modern Hinduism	1828	1828 onward	the reform society and the printing press	124
28	The Nineteenth-Century New Religions	1830	1830–1889	the print run and the mail	128
29	Pentecostalism	1901	1901–present	a free newspaper, then a radio licence	128
30	Rastafari	1930	1930 onward	the record	132
31	The Unaffiliated	1951	1951 onward	the paperback that replaced the coven	126

Rows marked with a dot have no defensible single founding date. The same table is machine-readable at data/catalog.json.

Repeats

Four traditions ignite more than once.

Not a filing convenience. The unit of the series is one tradition’s arc from ignition to first division, and a tradition that ignited more than once holds more than one slot — each with its own room, machine, canon, economy and split.

Christianity Early Christianity · Imperial Christianity · The Reformation An illegal sect, a state religion, a print movement. Fifteen hundred years apart, and each one starts over.
Buddhism Buddhism · Mahayana Buddhism · Zen · Tibetan Buddhism A north Indian forest, a sutra workshop, a lineage certificate, and a Tibetan printing house that never stopped.
Islam Islam · Sunni and Shia · Sufism Mecca and the standardised codex, Karbala and the named chain, then the order as a franchise.
Hinduism The Vedic World · Classical Hinduism · Modern Hinduism Recitation with checksums, the deed engraved in copper, and the reform society with a printing press.

Common questions

The questions this table gets asked.

What is the oldest religion?

As asked, it has no clean answer, because “oldest” means two different things. If it means the earliest tradition for which secure evidence survives, the first entry on this chronology is Mesopotamia, attested from about 3500 BCE. If it means the earliest tradition to have begun, nobody can say: several traditions that are still practised place their own beginnings earlier than any evidence reaches. This series prints both figures and does not choose between them.

What does “earliest secure attestation” mean?

The earliest surviving dated evidence that the tradition existed — an inscription, a tablet, a manuscript, a datable document — as opposed to the date the tradition itself gives for its beginning. It is a claim about evidence, not about origin, and the two are frequently centuries apart.

Why is this list not ordered by when each religion began?

Because eleven of these thirty-one traditions have no defensible single founding date, and for several of the rest the tradition’s date and the historians’ date are centuries apart. Ordering by founding date would print eleven fictions in the contents page. Ordering by earliest secure attestation prints only what can be shown.

Why do the two date columns disagree?

They are two different facts. “Attested from” is the earliest secure evidence and the key the shelf is sorted on. “Narrates” is the period the volume actually covers, taken from its own researched outline. Sunni and Shia is attested from the first fitna in 656, which falls inside the Islam volume’s 610–661, which is exactly why it opens at 661.

Why does one religion appear more than once?

Because the unit of the series is one tradition’s arc from ignition to first division, not one religion per book. Christianity ignites three times — as an illegal sect in the 30s, as a state religion in 312, and as a print movement in 1517 — and each has its own room, machine, canon, economy and split. Buddhism holds four slots, Islam three, Hinduism three.

Do these books say which religion is true?

No. Belief System does not adjudicate. Where a tradition’s account and the earliest evidence disagree, both are given, in their own vocabulary, attributed, and neither is given the last word. No miracle is reported as fact and none is denied, and no volume tells you what anybody was thinking.

Where does this table come from?

From the series’ own chronology, which is maintained against every volume’s researched outline: a script refuses to run while any volume is still a scaffold, checks that every ordering key falls inside its own coverage span, and checks that the series is in fact sorted by the column it says it is sorted by. The same data is machine-readable at data/catalog.json.

Every row is a book.

About three hours’ reading each.

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