The spread of Christianity in Pacific societies: Using computational analyses to explore questions of cultural evolution

The well-documented Christianization of Austronesian societies served scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human History as a “natural experiment” to test how various factors influenced the spread of the new faith. This research provides new insights into historical processes and can help to better understand how, for example, demographic, cultural or environmental factors influence the spread and adoption of new institutions, ideologies and technologies today, and how they might spread in the future.