Is God really a volcano

[The Grand Nudger]

Kichi, cargo cults. The reason they're such a big deal is that they emerged within our modern experience, and we were able to document "the birth of a religion" exceedingly well. The locals used their own indigenous myth structure and wrapped it around a verifiable set of events (and people). Their explanations were understandable from their vantage point, and completely known to us (as we, and our equipment became the object of worship). The narrative became something that was entirely their own, very much an easily distinguished part of their culture, but completely divergent from anything that we are able to discern before that point. One of the more interesting things about this is that they did not actually completely abandon their previous religious observances, but we wouldn't have been able to tell that from our vantage point in the present had this happened a few thousand years ago. The similarities would have been lost to the sands of time (as would the original source material pre-contact).