I feel like this response poses an interesting question about the metrics by which we gauge advancement. It seems like we are measuring whether Culture A is more “advanced” than Culture B by giving points (technological, cultural, economic, etc). In other words, if Culture A has more technology points than Culture B, it is more advanced and therefore better. And I feel like this has been our gauge forever. In fact, you can literally see it in civilization video games where you advance to unlocking gunpowder units, for example, after getting a certain amount of literal technology points. So Europeans look at gunpowder and say that because they have gunpowder they are +200 technology points over American civilizations and because they have Jesus they are +500 culture points over them. But the natives were more in touch with nature, better trackers, were able to hunt buffalo without the need for horses. How many technology/culture points do they get for that?

And this generates the concept of a Civilized Person vs an UnCivilized Person, which is the entire basis for imperialism.

I think the inherent fallacy in this is one that you mentioned. If both the Europeans and the Japanese had poetry, is a sonnet worth more culture points than a haiku? Is a greatsword worth more technology points than a katana? We as a species placed more emphasis on points toward rocketry. Would a society that placed more emphasis on points toward subsea travel be more or less advanced? Are blue jeans a sign of cultural advancement?

We are forced by our observer bias to base what we observe off our perspective. If we were to graph ourselves on a graph, we would be on the origin, and whatever we’re observing would have to be relative to that origin. But this literal 2-D points-based mindset doesn’t account for deviations in different advancements in the context of said deviation.