Cargo Cults
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Cargo cults originated in Melanesia at about eighty-three years ago during World War II. It is also known to be practiced across the South Pacific and New Guinea. These cults believed that by imitating what the soldiers, sailors, and airmen did and used to air-drop cargo goods onto their islands, more goods would eventually appear.
The purpose of cargo cults was to basically worship cargo, repeating rituals that they believed would communicate with these "godly" airplanes to bring them back cargo full of goods from the heavens during the war. Due to this new obsession, they turned back from a few of their old religious ways that existed before the war, though their beliefs of the special cargo deliveries existed long before the appearance of the Western troops. They believed that the exchange of goods and objects of wealth are a essential way in which communities and social relationships are maintained. For example, the worship of cargo was almost an immediate after Russian explorer Miklouho-Maclay gave gifts of Western goods to the natives at New Guinea during the eighteenth century.
Acculturation is a cultural change that occurs in response to extended firsthand contacts between two or more previously autonomous groups. Cargo cults developed because of the excessive cargo drops occurring during World War II. With these sightings, the people of Melanesia thought of this and concluded the sightings of these airplanes or whatever the sailors or airmen used would have them communicate with the gods to bring them more goods onto there island...