Last night, thanks to Mr. John Baldwin, I became aware of the concept of Cargo Cults and, specifically, the John Frum movement. How I had not heard of this before is neither here nor there, I'm just glad I'm aware of it now. The basic gist is that during WWII the US would make supply drops to various islands but not actually set up camp for some time.. allowing any natives on the island (who may not have had any communication with an outside world) to draw their own conclusions. Occasionally this would result in natives deciding that gods had bestowed these items to them. It is certainly an understandable conclusion.. if completely foreign items fell from the sky and landed in my neighborhood, I'm not sure you could really make any conclusion other than that!

Anyway, I'm a total novice on the subject but I find it fascinating and hope to read up more on it. This Smithsonian Magazine article looks to be pretty informative.. I'll start there and see what sort of rabbit hole it leads me down.