all societies have been advancing. there are no advanced and non-advanced societies. there are only societies who have advanced differently. europeans expected when they headed out into the world to find other societies doing things the same as them. when they did not, they took this to be a failure in who they found, not in their perspective. Native Americans, Africans, and Asians who bore the brunt of European colonization had knowledge and technology the Europeans couldn't imagine. so when they encountered it they assumed the "savage brutes" were underutilizing the miraculous resources around them rather the originators and keepers of those resources.

this lack of imagination has continued to stymie a neo-colonial world's understanding of the possibilities that are available to us