The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?

by Jared Diamond

  Also part of this American value cluster is our emphasis on individual privacy, an unusual concept by the standards of world cultures, most of which provide little individual privacy and don’t consider it a desirable ideal. Instead, common traditional living arrangements consist of an extended family inside a single dwelling, or a group of huts or shelters around a single clearing, or a whole band sleeping in one communal shelter. Unthinkably to most modern Americans, even sex between a couple traditionally goes on with a minimum of privacy. The couple’s hammock or mat is visible to other couples, and the couple’s young children may be sharing the same mat but are merely expected to close their eyes. Our neolocal residence pattern, according to which children upon reaching the age of marriage set up their own private household, represents the opposite extreme from that traditional arrangement in which privacy is minimal.

  Care for the elderly goes against all those interwoven American values of independence, individualism, self-reliance, and privacy. We accept a baby’s dependence, because the baby has never been independent, but we struggle against the dependence of the elderly who have been independent for decades. But the cruel reality is that old people eventually reach a condition in which they can no longer live independently, cannot rely on their own abilities, and have no choice but to become dependent on others and to give up their long-cherished privacy. Dependency is at least as painful for the elderly person involved as for the middle-aged child who watches it happening to a formerly self-reliant parent. How many readers of this chapter have known an elderly person who insisted out of self-respect on trying to continue to live independently, until an accident (such as falling and breaking a hip, or being unable to get out of bed) made the continued independence impossible? American ideals push old Americans to lose self-respect, and push their younger care-givers to lose respect for them.

  The remaining distinctively American value creating prejudice against the aged is our cult of youth. Of course, this isn’t a completely arbitrary value that we happen to have adopted as a cultural preference for no good reason. It’s indeed true that, in this modern world of rapid technological change, the recency of young adults’ education makes their knowledge more up-to-date and useful for important things like jobs, and for mundane challenges of everyday life. I at age 75, and my 64-year-old wife, are reminded of this reality behind our cult of youth whenever we attempt to turn on our television set. We grew up accustomed to television sets with just three knobs, all located on the set itself: an on-off button, a volume control knob, and a channel selector knob. My wife and I can’t figure out the 41-button remote now required just to turn on our modern television set, and we have to phone our 25-year-old sons to talk us through it if they don’t happen to be at home with us. Another external factor favoring our cult of youth is the competitiveness of modern American society, which gives an advantage to younger people blessed with speed, endurance, strength, agility, and quick reflexes. Still another factor is that so many Americans are children of recent immigrants who were born and grew up abroad. Those children saw that their older parents couldn’t speak English without an accent and actually did lack important knowledge about the functioning of American society.

  That is, I don’t deny that there are some valid reasons for modern Americans to value youth. However, our cult of youth spills over into spheres that seem arbitrary and, in some cases, seriously unfair. We tend to consider young people beautiful or handsome, but why should yellow, brown, or black hair be admired as more beautiful than silver or white hair? Television, magazine, and newspaper advertisements for clothing invariably depict young models; the thought of advertising a man’s shirt or a woman’s dress with a 70-year-old model seems strange—but why? An economist might answer that younger people change and buy clothes more often, and have less developed brand loyalty, than do older people. By that economic interpretation, the ratio of 70-year-old clothing models to 20-year-old clothing models should be roughly equal to the ratio of clothing purchases and brand changes by 70-year-olds to clothing purchases and brand changes by 20-year-olds. But the proportion of clothing purchases and brand changes by 70-year-olds surely isn’t as close to zero as is the proportion of 70-year-old clothing models. Similarly, advertisements for soft drinks, beer, and new cars invariably feature young models (Plate 23), although old people also consume soft drinks and beer and buy cars. Instead, pictures of old people are used to sell adult diapers, arthritis drugs, and retirement plans (Plate 24).

  These examples from the world of advertising may seem humorous, until you reflect that they are merely one expression of American ageism: our cult of youth, and our negative view of aging. It isn’t a serious matter that 70-year-old models aren’t employed to sell soft drinks, but it is indeed serious that older job applicants are routinely passed over for job interviews, and that older patients receive lower priority for limited resources of medical care. The soft drink and beer ads aimed at old as well as young viewers also illustrate that a negative view of age is not only held by young Americans but is also internalized by old Americans themselves. Surveys by Louis Harris and Associates showed that American people believe that the elderly are bored, closed-minded, dependent, isolated, lonely, narrow-minded, neglected, old-fashioned, passive, poor, sedentary, sexually inactive, sick, unalert, unproductive, morbidly afraid of death, in constant fear of crime, living the worst years of life—and spending a good deal of their time sleeping, sitting and doing nothing, or nostalgically dwelling upon their past. These views were held equally by old people polled and by young people polled, even though the individual old people polled claimed that they themselves didn’t fit those stereotypes applying on the average to other old people.

  Society’s rules

  We have now considered several sets of factors influencing why societies variously take better or worse care of their elderly: the society’s ability to carry or feed them, their usefulness, and the society’s values, which tend to reflect that usefulness but are also to some degree independent of usefulness. But these are all ultimate explanatory factors unlikely to come up for discussion in practical day-to-day decisions about old people, such as whether or not to cut for Grandpa a choice steak from today’s antelope kill, even though he is no longer able to go hunting himself. The grandchild butchering the antelope doesn’t refer then to a general principle of ultimate value, such as “You remember what foods to eat after a hungi kengi, so we’ll reward your utility by giving you this steak.” Instead, those practical decisions are made in accordance with the society’s rules, which specify what to do in particular situations and ultimately reflect usefulness and values, but which let you divide an antelope quickly without philosophical discussions about hungi-kengis.

  There is a host of such rules, varying among societies, to cover a host of choices. The rules empower the elderly to commandeer certain but not other resources. The rules are accepted by young people, who defer to the elderly and let them take the resources, even though there is a clear conflict of interest between young and old people for the resources, and even though the young are strong enough to snatch the resources. But they don’t, and instead they agree to wait until they too are old and will be deferred to. Out of many possible sets of examples, I’ll give just three.

  A simple example involves food taboos, which ensure that certain foods are reserved for the elderly, in the belief (espoused by young and old alike) that the foods would endanger young people but that old people have acquired immunity to the danger with age. Every society has its own particular food taboos, which seem arbitrary to other societies, but taboos are widespread among traditional societies. For instance, young Omaha Indians inclined to break open animal bones in order to eat the rich marrow inside were warned by their wily elders that that would make them sprain their ankle, but that old people could safely eat marrow. Among the Iban of Borneo, old men enjoyed eating venison, but young men were forbidden to do so with the warning that it would make them as timid as deer. Old Siberian C
hukchi drank reindeer milk but tabooed it for younger people, alleging that it was for the latters’ protection because milk would make a young man impotent and would cause a young woman to develop flabby breasts.

  A particularly elaborate set of food taboos was reported for the Aranda (alias Arunta) Aborigines near Alice Springs in the central Australian desert. The best foods were reserved for old people, especially old men, who spelled out the dire consequences that would befall young people if they foolishly ate those forbidden foods. Supposedly, eating a female bandicoot makes a young man bleed to death when he is circumcised; emu fat causes abnormal development of the penis; eating parrots makes a hollow develop on top of the head, and a hole in the chin; and wildcat causes painful foul-smelling sores to break out on the head and neck. Young women were warned of further dangers: eating female bandicoot stimulates continued menstrual blood flow, kangaroo tail causes premature aging and baldness, quail prevents development of the breasts, and brown hawk conversely makes the breasts swell up and burst without producing milk.

  Another resource that old men in many societies succeed in monopolizing for themselves and tabooing for younger men is—younger women. The rules specify that older men should marry much younger women and have multiple wives, and that younger men should not expect to marry until they in turn reach the age of 40 or even older. The long list of traditional societies with such practices include the Akamba of East Africa, the Araucanian Indians of South America, the Bakong of West Africa, the Banks Islanders of the Southwest Pacific, the Berber of North Africa, the Chukchi of Siberia, the Iban of Borneo, the Labrador Inuit of Canada, the Xhosa of Southern Africa, and many Aboriginal Australian tribes. I encountered such a case among a tribe in the lowlands of North New Guinea, when an old lame man named Yono pointed out to me a girl who looked to be less than 10 years old, and whom he said he had “marked” as his bride-to-be. He had made a down payment on her as a baby at her birth, had periodically made further payments to her parents, and now expected to marry her as soon as her breasts developed and she underwent her first menses.

  As with food taboos and other privileges of the elderly, one has to ask why young people acquiesce in such rules and defer to the authority of the elderly. For young men, part of the reason is that they do so in the expectation that it will eventually be their turn. In the meantime, they hang around the campfire and seek opportunities for sexual satisfaction when the old husband is absent.

  These two sets of examples of rules by which the elderly in many traditional societies ensure that they will be cared for—by food taboos, and by rigorously reserving young wives for old men—don’t operate in modern industrial societies. Hence we find ourselves wondering why young people of those traditional societies tolerate such rules. My remaining set of examples will be much more familiar to this book’s readers: the retention of property rights by the elderly. In modern societies today, just as in many traditional societies, most old people relinquish ownership of their property only through inheritance at the time that they die. Hence the threat, lurking in the background, of the elderly altering their wills contributes to the motivation of the young to care for their elders.

  A mild example of this phenomenon operates for a !Kung band, whose rights to its land (the n!ore) are considered to be associated with the oldest band members, not with the band as a whole. More coercive examples are nearly ubiquitous among herding and farming societies: the senior generation, usually in the form of its patriarchal male, continues to own its land, livestock, and valuable possessions into old age, and most often until death. Hence the patriarch enjoys a commanding position to persuade his children to let him stay in the family house and to take care of him. For example, the Old Testament describes Abraham and other Hebrew patriarchs as owning many livestock in their old age. Old Chukchi men own reindeer; old Mongol men own horses; old Navajo own horses, sheep, cattle, and goats; and old Kazakhs own those same four livestock species plus camels. By controlling livestock, farmland, and (nowadays) other property and financial assets, older people hold strong leverage over the younger generation.

  In many societies, the power that the old generation thereby exercises is so strong that the society’s government becomes described as a “gerontocracy”—i.e., tyranny by the elderly. Examples include again the ancient Hebrews, many African herding societies, many Aboriginal Australian tribes, and (closer to home for my book readers) rural Ireland. As summarized by Donald Cowgill, “Here [in Ireland] it is customary for an older man to retain ownership and control of the family farm until very late in his life. Meanwhile his sons continue to work as unpaid family laborers, totally dependent upon the farmer for economic support and unable to marry because of the lack of an independent means of supporting a family. In the absence of a definite and unambiguous system of inheritance, the father may play one child against another, using the prospect of inheritance as ‘a form of blackmail’ to keep the children (in their 30’s or 40’s) submissive to his will. Ultimately he may turn the farm over to a son, being careful to reserve the ‘west room’—the most spacious and best furnished—for himself and his wife and to provide for financial support for the rest of their lives.”

  In light of our own familiarity with the power that the elderly enjoy in our society through their property rights, we can now better understand our error in our initial surprise at the fact that the elderly in traditional societies succeed in enforcing food taboos and access to young wives. When I first heard of those customs, I found myself wondering, “Why doesn’t an individual young tribesman just grab and eat food delicacies like marrow and venison, and marry a beautiful young woman of his choice rather than wait until age 40?” The answer is: he doesn’t, for the same reason that young adults in our society rarely succeed in seizing property from their parents against the parents’ will. Our young adults don’t, because they would be opposed not just by their weak old parents but by our entire society that enforces the rules. And why don’t all young tribesmen rise simultaneously in revolt and say, “We are changing the rules, so that from now on we young men can eat marrow”? Young tribesmen don’t, for the same reason that all young Americans don’t rise in revolt and change the inheritance rules: in any society it’s a lengthy, difficult process to change the basic rules, old people have plenty of leverage for opposing rule changes, and learned deference and respect for the elderly don’t vanish overnight.

  Better or worse today?

  Compared to the status of the elderly in traditional societies, what has changed today? One set of factors has changed enormously for the better, but many other factors have changed for the worse.

  The good news is that older people enjoy on the average much longer lives, far better health, far more recreational opportunities, and far less grief from deaths of their children than at any previous time in human history. Life expectancy averaged over 26 First World countries is 79 years, with the highest expectancy being 84 years in Japan—approximately double the value in traditional societies. The well-known reasons for this surge in lifespan are public health measures (such as provision of clean drinking water, screening of windows, and immunizations) to combat infectious diseases—plus modern medicine, more efficient food distribution to combat famine (Chapters 8 and 11), and (believe it or not, even despite two world wars) proportionately reduced death tolls from war in societies with state government compared to traditional societies (Chapter 4). Thanks to modern medicine and means of travel, old people can now enjoy a much higher quality of life today than in the past. For example, I recently returned from a safari in Africa on which 3 of the 14 other participants were between 86 and 90 years old and still able to undertake moderate walks. Far more people live to see their great-grandchildren—57% of those American men and 68% of those American women who live past the age of 80—than in the past. Over 98% of First World babies survive infancy and childhood, while the proportion is as low as 50% in traditional societies. Hence the formerly common experience of grieving over the de
ath of one’s child is now rare in the First World.

  Offsetting that good news is much bad news, some of it a straightforward consequence of demography. The ratio of old people to children and productive young workers has soared, because birth rates have dropped while survival rates of the elderly have risen. That is, the population pyramid is becoming inverted: we used to have lots of young people and few old people, but at present we have lots of old people and fewer babies. It’s no consolation to us of the current generation to reflect that it won’t be so bad 80 years from now, when today’s shrinking cohort of babies finally becomes a shrinking cohort of the elderly. For instance, the percentage of the whole population that is at least 65 years old is now only 2% in the poorest countries, but 10 times higher in some First World countries. Never before has any human society had proportionally so many old people to deal with.

  One obvious negative consequence of those demographic facts is that society’s burden of supporting the elderly is heavier, because more older people require to be supported by fewer productive workers. That cruel reality lies at the root of the much-discussed looming crisis of funding the American Social Security system (and its European and Japanese counterparts) that provides pensions for retired workers. If we older people keep working, we prevent our children’s and our grandchildren’s generation from getting jobs, as is happening right now. If, instead, we older people retire and expect the earnings of the shrinking younger cohort to continue to fund the Social Security system and pay for our leisure, then the financial burden of the younger cohort is far greater than ever before. And if we expect to move in with them and let them privately support and care for us in their homes, they have other ideas. One wonders whether we are returning to a world where we shall be reconsidering choices about end of life made by traditional societies—such as assisted suicide, encouraged suicide, and euthanasia. In writing these words, I am certainly not recommending these choices; I am instead observing the increasing frequency with which these measures are being discussed, carried out, and debated by legislators and courts.