Why were early unilinear theories of cultural evolution criticized as racist?

Early unilinear theories of cultural evolution were criticized as racist because they established a hierarchical framework that ranked human societies along a single, fixed path of progress, with European industrial civilizations placed at the pinnacle and non-European cultures labeled as "primitive" or "savage".12

These theories were inherently ethnocentric, as they used European standards to define "civilization" and assumed that all societies were destined to follow the same developmental stages. By characterizing non-Western peoples as "laggards" or living fossils of humanity's past, these models provided a pseudo-scientific justification for imperialism, colonialism, and the denial of rights to those deemed "backward".12345

Anthropologists like Franz Boas challenged these views by arguing that such rankings were biased and lacked objective criteria. Boas championed cultural relativism, asserting that all cultures are equally capable of fulfilling the needs of their members and that cultural differences arise from unique historical and environmental circumstances rather than biological or evolutionary inferiority. This shift rejected the racist assumption that some groups were inherently less capable of innovation or development.63