The Database of Religious History and Cultural Evolution

This meeting is a follow up to Coding the Past: The Challenges and Promise of Large-Scale Cultural Databases, which took place at SFI in October 2022. This follow-up meeting will bring together archaeologists, historians, and cultural evolutionary theorists to pursue specific analytical approaches to the information contained in the Database of Religious History that emerged during the initial meeting. Discussion will focus on four areas: 1) application of spin glass mathematics to assess relationships among variables; 2) “genotype-phenotype” maps showing relationships between religious ideas and social behavior; 3) definition of search spaces based on combinatorial possibilities; 4) evolution of innovation and novelty in society and culture