ABSTRACT
Let us first look at the Australian Aboriginal society, which was a hunting and gathering society without agriculture or pastoralism. People lived off the land, by collecting food directly from the environment. In this society kinship systems were highly elaborated and have been the fascination of anthropologists for generations. These societies have the characteristics of gerontocracies, in that elderly men dominate the political life of these societies and have the most power and status (cf. Berndt & Berndt 1983). Two anthropologists, Hart and Pilling, have provided us with an account of the Tiwi. Hart lived with the Tiwi in the period 1928-9 and Pilling during 1953-4, and in their book The Tiwi of North Australia (Hart & Pilling 1960) they describe how old people come to dominate this group. I will illustrate the process through an account of a dispute settling scene. This example is significant because it uses anthropological material to undercut Western preconceptions about human societies and ageist myths. It shows that, contrary to the noble savage image, violence does occur in such societies but, that in contrast to notions of the savage barbarian, such violence does not lead to the young fit men, the expected aggressors, dominating society. On the contrary, the younger men have to submit to the violence of the gerontocracy.
