This takes me to a politically incorrect place: Perhaps indigenous cultures are like early successionary species (hmm, like weeds), exploiting resources via a limited array of methods (hunter-gathering, digging-stick agriculture) while industrial cultures have evolved a diverse array of specialties (smelting, drilling, military logistics, accounting, etc.) for exploiting resources unused by the earlier inhabitants. I don't much like where this takes us, as it creates a justification for the idea of calling some cultures "primitive," but then, that's only when we view them through the lens of technology or ability to exploit certain resources. If we change the criteria to, say, plant knowledge, intact families, or integration of spirit into culture, then western culture is the primitive one. But this successional viewpoint does explain why western culture is colonizing most of the planet. We're more effective at turning everything into a "resource" and using it to fuel our cultural expansion, regardless of the consequences, crowding out the early occupants.
My point then, is that thinking of the spread of certain cultures as "weediness" is not as good an analogy as succession and aggressive resource exploitation. Westerners convert the whole planet into their habitat, but weeds are limited to bare soil.
I'm happy to have this idea battered down, refined, or amended; it leaves me a little depressed.
Toby
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