In one of my favorite speeches, the 1974 CalTech commencment, physicist Richard Feynman decried what he called "cargo cult science." Cargo cults are the anthropologically fascinating result of the interaction between primitive cultures and developed ones.
Most famously, during the U.S. island hopping campaign in the Pacific during WWII, we built military bases on many small pacific islands. The native inhabitants previously had little or no contact with modern materiel, and when the war ended and the bases were deserted. Not understanding the source of the equipment, many native societies formed cults to bring back the supplies. They constructed all the superficial trappings of the military bases; they built runways with bamboo airplanes to lure the planes back. Men sat watch with coconut and bamboo radio headsets. Soldiers marched with wooden rifles.