Open Questions

Open An Lushan Rebellion

Why It Is Open The only widely repeated total, thirty six million, comes from subtracting one disputed Tang census count from another rather than from any direct accounting of the dead, and the compiler who popularized it later revised his own figure down by more than half using a different method on the same two numbers. Historians who have examined the underlying census data consider it unreliable for this purpose, but none consulted has published a replacement war death total of their own.

What Would Settle It A demographic historian's reconstruction of Tang population loss across 755 to 763 that accounts for wartime migration, tax registration collapse and regional variation rather than a single before and after census subtraction, similar to the kind of regional accounting that has been attempted for other long, poorly recorded wars on this atlas.

Expertise Needed Tang dynasty history; historical demography

Open The 1955 Anti-Baha'i Campaign in Iran

Why It Is Open IHRDC's history of the campaign documents one dated mass killing, the Yazd massacre of 28 July 1955 with seven dead, alongside widespread but uncounted violence, coerced recantations and property destruction reported in cities across Iran during the same month long campaign. No human rights body or historian consulted has totaled that wider violence into a single nationwide death count for the 1955 campaign specifically, as distinct from the persecution's later, better documented decades.

What Would Settle It A dedicated historical accounting of the April to May 1955 campaign specifically, cross-checking Bahai community records, contemporary Iranian press and any surviving official records city by city, of the kind IHRDC and other human rights documentation projects have since built for later, better recorded periods of Bahai persecution in Iran.

Expertise Needed Modern Iranian history; human rights documentation

Open Reconquista

Why It Is Open Historians have never attempted a single aggregate casualty figure for the Reconquista: nearly eight centuries of intermittent campaigns, sieges and truces across several separate Christian kingdoms fighting several separate Muslim states, with no continuous or comparable record keeping across that whole span, make a single defensible total a different kind of undertaking than counting the dead of a bounded war fought at one time by two sides. A figure of seven million dead is nonetheless widely repeated in popular accounts, but it traces to no named historian, study or archival source, and Joseph O'Callaghan's scholarly history of the conflict's crusading and religious framing gives no aggregate total either.

What Would Settle It A historical demographer's attempt to build a period by period and kingdom by kingdom casualty accounting across the centuries long conflict, rather than the single figure a bounded war can be given.

Expertise Needed Medieval Iberian history; historical demography

Question posed in Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, Joseph F. O'Callaghan.

Open Sikh-Mughal Wars

Why It Is Open J.S. Grewal's standard modern history of the Sikhs, and other accessible surveys of the conflict, record casualty figures for individual battles and massacres, tens of thousands at the Battle of Bhilowal, thousands at Chhota Ghallughara, hundreds at the siege of Gurdaspur, but none totals them into a single figure for the roughly ninety year conflict, and no comprehensive scholarly count was located. A figure is never invented to fill that gap.

What Would Settle It A scholarly synthesis totaling documented losses across the conflict's 1621 to 1715 span, or a demographic study of Punjab's population comparable to the census based methods used for other early modern wars. No such synthesis was located across the standard modern histories of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Military and demographic history of Mughal India and early Sikh Punjab.

Question posed in J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3), J. S. Grewal.

Open Second Punic War

Why It Is Open Adrian Goldsworthy's scholarly history of the Punic Wars, and the ancient accounts of Polybius and Livy it draws on, record casualty figures for individual battles, roughly 15,000 Roman dead at Trebia, 15,000 at Lake Trasimene, and a toll near 50,000 at Cannae, alongside modern demographic reconstructions of the Roman citizen census, which fell from 273,000 in 225 BC toward roughly half that within the war's first decade. None of these totals a single figure for combat and civilian deaths on both sides across the full seventeen year war, and no comprehensive scholarly count was located.

What Would Settle It A scholarly synthesis totaling documented losses across the war's Italian, Spanish, Sicilian and African theaters, or a demographic study using the Roman citizen census figures to derive a total including allied Italian troops, Carthaginian forces and civilians, comparable to the census based methods used for other wars this atlas records. No such synthesis was located across the standard modern histories of the conflict.

Expertise Needed Roman republican military and demographic history.

Question posed in The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC, Adrian Goldsworthy.

Open The Greco-Persian Wars

Why It Is Open Herodotus's Histories records casualty figures for individual engagements, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale among them, but modern scholars regard many of the ancient figures, including the size of the Persian invasion force itself, as unreliable and often inflated. No modern scholarly synthesis was located that totals deaths across the wars' span into a single figure; scholarship instead discusses each battle's own contested numbers on its own terms.

What Would Settle It A modern scholarly total built from revised, rather than Herodotus's own, troop and casualty figures across the wars' major engagements, or a demographic study of Achaemenid and Greek population loss over the conflict. No such synthesis was located.

Expertise Needed Ancient Greek and Achaemenid Persian military history.

Question posed in Histories, Herodotus.

Open Hundred Years War

Why It Is Open Jonathan Sumption's multi volume scholarly history covers the war's campaigns in detail, and named battle losses are documented, thousands of French dead at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt among them, but no historian's synthesis totals combat deaths together with the compounding effects of famine and the Black Death across the war's hundred and sixteen year span into one figure. Totals near two to three million, or as high as five million, circulate widely but trace to popular compilations rather than a named historian's stated methodology.

What Would Settle It A named historian's stated total distinguishing direct battle deaths from indirect famine and plague mortality across the war's full span, comparable to the demographic methods used for other wars this atlas records. No such study was located; only unattributed aggregator totals circulate.

Expertise Needed Late medieval English and French military and demographic history.

Question posed in The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle, Jonathan Sumption.

Open Hellenic Polytheism (Hellenismos)

Why It Is Open Greece's 2017 court recognition of Hellenismos as a known religion created no accompanying census requirement, and the Greek government has published no official count of its followers. Every figure reported in the press, from roughly two thousand to five thousand committed practitioners up to a much larger circle of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people described as having some interest, traces back to estimates offered by the movement's own leadership, the Supreme Council of Ethnic Hellenes, rather than to an independent survey or government body.

What Would Settle It A Greek national census question on religious affiliation fine grained enough to separate Hellenismos from the ninety eight percent Greek Orthodox majority, or an academic survey of Greek Hellenic polytheists conducted by a body outside the movement's own leadership.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion, religious demography

Question posed in Wikipedia, "Hellenism (Religion)", Wikipedia contributors.

Open Kemeticism

Why It Is Open Kemeticism has never been independently counted. No government census records religious affiliation at this level of detail, no recognized religious-statistics body has surveyed it, and its own reference literature, including its English-language Wikipedia treatment, states no membership figure of any kind. The 1994 United States federal recognition of Kemetic Orthodoxy as a tax-exempt religious organization established legal standing, not a headcount.

What Would Settle It A dedicated survey of Kemetic practitioners conducted by a body independent of the movement's own clergy, or a government religious-affiliation census large enough to sample reconstructionist Egyptian religion as its own category rather than folding it into a broader Pagan or Other total.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion, religious demography

Question posed in Wikipedia, "Kemetism", Wikipedia contributors.

Open Basque Mythology

Why It Is Open Basque mythology survives only as legend recorded from rural informants after Christianization was already dominant, and Basque, a language isolate, offers no comparative linguistic route to an earlier stage the way related Indo-European mythologies do. Nothing currently ties the figure of Mari or the wider nature-spirit cast to any datable period before the ethnographic record itself.

What Would Settle It An inscription, cult site or artifact in the western Pyrenees securely tied to a named pre-Christian Basque deity or practice, or a linguistic reconstruction anchoring core mythological vocabulary to a datable stage of the Basque language, would give scholars an actual point to reason from instead of the modern record alone.

Expertise Needed archaeology and historical linguistics

Question posed in Selected Writings of Jose Miguel de Barandiaran: Basque Prehistory and Ethnography, Jose Miguel de Barandiaran, ed. Jesus Altuna, trans. Frederick H. Fornoff, Linda White and Carys Evans-Corrales.

Open Ladin Mythology

Why It Is Open The Ladin legend cycle of the Dolomite valleys was gathered into literary form only in the early twentieth century, and no formal pantheon, priesthood or earlier textual trace survives to say how old the material already was when it was collected.

What Would Settle It An earlier manuscript, inscription or outside traveler's account referencing specific Ladin mountain-spirit legends before their twentieth century literary collection would establish a real floor for the material's age.

Expertise Needed folklore studies and historical linguistics

Question posed in Dolomitensagen (Wolff), Karl Felix Wolff.

Open Sardinian Folk Tradition

Why It Is Open Sardinian folk belief is described as layered over the island's prehistoric Nuragic civilization and Ozieri culture tombs, but the folklore itself was recorded only from the nineteenth century onward, and nothing currently establishes a documented line of transmission between the prehistoric archaeological culture and the modern oral material.

What Would Settle It Archaeological or textual evidence linking specific Nuragic-era ritual practice to a named figure or custom still recorded in nineteenth or twentieth century Sardinian folklore would establish an actual continuity, rather than a merely geographic layering.

Expertise Needed archaeology and folklore studies

Question posed in Leggende e Racconti Popolari della Sardegna (Turchi), Dolores Turchi.

Open Sicilian Folk Religion

Why It Is Open Everything known about the donne di fuori comes from sixteenth and seventeenth century Inquisition trial transcripts, an adversarial record built from interrogation rather than celebration, and no source independent of that prosecution says how established the belief already was when the trials began.

What Would Settle It A Sicilian civil, notarial or ecclesiastical record predating the sixteenth century that references night-gathering spirit-women under any name would show the belief already existed before the surviving trial record begins.

Expertise Needed history and folklore studies

Question posed in The Ladies from Outside (Henningsen), Gustav Henningsen, in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.).

Open Tengrism

Why It Is Open Test why open, twenty plus characters here easily.

What Would Settle It Test what would resolve, twenty plus characters here easily.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion

Question posed in Tengrism (Wikipedia).

Open Native American Religion

Why It Is Open This entry aggregates hundreds of distinct nations whose access rules range from fully open to strictly closed, so no single status value on the umbrella entity can be honest. A general source can show that variation exists but cannot resolve any one nation's specific rule.

What Would Settle It Recording closed-practice-status individually on each nation's own tradition entity, citing that nation's own statement or a specific scholarly or legal source, the way this has already been done for the Hopi, Taos Pueblo, Warlpiri, Arrernte and Haudenosaunee Longhouse traditions and the Native American Church.

Question posed in Wikipedia, Native American Church (source), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Cao Đài

Why It Is Open English language sources on Cao Dai describe devotional ritual offerings, incense, fruit, flowers, tea and alcohol, at daily temple ceremonies, but none states a fixed due, a percentage of income or an enforcement consequence for not giving, the shape every other body on the atlas's member giving expectations axis carries.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of the Tan Luat (Cao Dai's New Canonical Law) or the Phap Chanh Truyen (Religious Constitution), or a scholarly ethnography of Tay Ninh Holy See temple finance, stating whether registered Cao Dai members owe a fixed contribution and what follows if they do not pay it.

Expertise Needed Vietnamese religious studies, primary source review of Cao Dai canonical texts

Question posed in Cao Dai (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open Santo Daime

Why It Is Open The tradition's own English language materials cover belief, ritual and history but say nothing about a member's financial obligation, and the scholarship on Brazilian ayahuasca religions checked in this search addresses supply and commercialization between communities rather than an individual member's own giving.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of the tradition's own Portuguese language materials, or ethnographic scholarship that specifically addresses whether a member owes a financial contribution to their own church or line.

Expertise Needed Brazilian religious studies and the anthropology of new religious movements

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open União do Vegetal

Why It Is Open The tradition's own United States affiliate FAQ was read in full and covers history, legal status and ritual practice in detail, but says nothing about a membership fee or any other financial obligation, positive or negative.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of Uniao do Vegetal's own Portuguese language internal materials, or published scholarship that specifically addresses member financial obligation.

Expertise Needed Brazilian religious studies and the anthropology of new religious movements

Question posed in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418, Supreme Court of the United States.

Open Barquinha

Why It Is Open Barquinha is the least documented of the three Brazilian ayahuasca religions in the material checked for this axis, and no source found in this search, in English or Portuguese, addresses whether a member owes a financial contribution to their own house.

What Would Settle It A direct reading of a Barquinha house's own materials, in Portuguese, or ethnographic fieldwork among Barquinha communities that addresses member financial obligation specifically.

Expertise Needed Brazilian religious studies and the anthropology of new religious movements

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Yarsanism

Why It Is Open Yarsani adherents are folded into Iran's broader Muslim population in its national census, and no other government or denominational body maintains a count of them; every published figure is an undated snapshot from fieldwork, advocacy or journalism rather than one point in a tracked series.

What Would Settle It A dedicated demographic study, most plausibly built from community register data the Yarsani community itself might keep informally, or from a specially commissioned survey, giving dated counts that could be compared over time the way this axis compares other bodies.

Expertise Needed Demography, Iranian religious minority studies

Question posed in The Religious Textual Heritage of the Yarsan (Ahl-e Haqq), Philip G. Kreyenbroek.