Taxonomia Religionum

A Comparative Taxonomy for the World's Life Frameworks

29 traditions across 11 families, analyzed through 13 functional dimensions

The Mirror Image — The Diné-Māori Match

~20 min

Learning Objectives

  • Explain the Diné-Māori 7/7 theological match
  • Describe each of the 7 theological dimensions using concrete examples from both traditions
  • Articulate why identical scores do not mean identical content
  • Understand how two unrelated traditions can converge on the same structural answers

This lesson walks through the most dramatic finding in the dataset: the Diné (Navajo) and Māori matched on all seven theological dimensions — the only perfect 7/7 match among twenty-nine traditions.

Why This Matters

The Diné of the American Southwest and the Māori of New Zealand have never had contact. Their material worlds could hardly be more different — high desert canyonlands versus lush volcanic islands. Yet when we measured their answers to the deepest questions, they were identical.