Spatial constraints on the diffusion of religious innovations: The case of early Christianity in the Roman Empire
Spatial constraints on the diffusion of religious innovations: The case of early Christianity in the Roman Empire
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0208744
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发表时间：
2018-12-26
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Chalupa, Ales
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fousek, Jan;Kase, Vojtech;Chalupa, Ales
基督教在一世纪的巴勒斯坦作为一个小规模的边缘运动出现，在接下来的三个世纪里，它在整个地中海地区变得非常引人注目。人们对过去社会传播创新思想的机制知之甚少。在这里，我们研究如何将基督教的传播解释为受罗马帝国实际旅行限制的扩散过程。首先，我们将先前建立的交通网络模型与城市人口估计相结合，评估静态因素可以在多大程度上解释基督教传播的时空模式。其次，我们应用网络理论方法利用有效距离来分析传播过程。我们表明，基督教在前两个世纪的传播密切遵循重力引导的传播，并在第三世纪大幅加速。使用有效距离测量，我们能够建议传播的可能路径。我们的工作展示了如何仅使用帝国的空间约束和城市化结构来解释我们在数据中观察到的时空模式。我们的研究结果还提供了一个可重复用于研究其他文化传播现象的方法框架。
Christianity emerged as a small and marginal movement in the first century Palestine and throughout the following three centuries it became highly visible in the whole Mediterranean. Little is known about the mechanisms of spreading innovative ideas in past societies. Here we investigate how well the spread of Christianity can be explained as a diffusive process constrained by physical travel in the Roman Empire. First, we combine a previously established model of the transportation network with city population estimates and evaluate to which extent the spatio-temporal pattern of the spread of Christianity can be explained by static factors. Second, we apply a network-theoretical approach to analyze the spreading process utilizing effective distance. We show that the spread of Christianity in the first two centuries closely follows a gravity-guided diffusion, and is substantially accelerated in the third century. Using the effective distance measure, we are able to suggest the probable path of the spread. Our work demonstrates how the spatio-temporal patterns we observe in the data can be explained using only spatial constraints and urbanization structure of the empire. Our findings also provide a methodological framework to be reused for studying other cultural spreading phenomena.