Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

C. A. Scott[37] tells us that in certain south Australian tribes it is taboo to catch or eat certain animals until a man has reached a prescribed advanced age, these animals being easiest to catch and the most wholesome and thus best adapted to old people’s use. One of the chief maxims in Tonga is to reverence the gods, the chief, and old people. In Java, among the Iroquois, Dakotas, Comanches, the Hill tribes of India (Santals and Kukis), the Snakes and Zunis, much respect is shown to the aged.

K. Routledge[38] says, “part of the deference paid to advancing years, whether in men or women, is due to fear. Old age has something uncanny about it, and old persons could probably ‘make medicine’ or work havoc, were they so inclined.” One chief said that in councils the old women would have their way because “it is a great work to have borne a child.” A young warrior is taught to get out of the road for an old woman. She does not, however, take part in the sacrifices, although one called herself the wife of God and seemed to have established a sort of cult. This was because she was a woman of much character. Here the mothers take full part in initiations. The dignity and self-reliance of the older women is remarkable. When a woman is so old that she has no teeth she is said to be “filled with intelligence” and on her death receives the high honor of burial instead of being thrown out to the hyenas.

A. L. Cureau[39] tells us that the Negro is short-lived and that if some lucky star enables him to reach forty he becomes a man of importance, although death does not usually permit him to enjoy this distinction long. “During more than twenty years I never knew more than four or five who could have been considered sixty-five or seventy years of age, and even persons who were from fifty to sixty are very uncommon. At the age of thirty-five or forty they all exhibit signs of premature decrepitude.” He thinks the death rate from forty to forty-five very high. Disease among the Africans is limited to only a few general troubles. Burial is usually by interment, although in some districts the dead are eaten, while elsewhere they are thrown into the river or left lying on the ground in some remote spot. Respect for the chief, however, continues to be observed even after his death. But customs are growing mild, and “if human sacrifice still takes place in locations that are most remote from our stations, the fact is kept a profound secret.”

H. A. Junod[40] gives a melancholy picture of old age, especially for the leading man of the tribe. His wives die, his glory fades, his crown loses its luster and if it is scratched or broken he cannot repair it, he is forsaken, less respected, and often only a burden unwillingly supported. “The children laugh at him. If the cook sends them to their lonely grandfather with his share of food in the leaky old hut, the young rascals are capable of eating it on the way, pretending afterwards that they did what they were told.” When, between two huts, under the shelter of the woods the old man warms his round-shouldered back in the rays of the sun, lost in some senile dream, his former friends point to him and say, “It is the bogie man, the ogre.” Mature people show little more consideration for the old than do the young ones. Junod knew personally an old man and woman who, when their children moved to another part of the country, were left under a roof with no sides, without food, and were almost imbecile. “In times of war old people die in great numbers. During the movements of panic they are hidden in the woods, in the swamps or palm trees, while all the able-bodied population runs away. They are killed by the enemy, who spare no one, or they die in their hiding places of misery and hunger. Thus the evening of life is very sad for the poor Thonga.” There are, however, children who to the end show devotion to their parents. Those old people are most to be pitied who fall to the charge of remote relatives.

A. Hrdlicka[41] says, “The proportion of nonagenarians, and especially centenarians, among the Indians is far in excess of that among native white Americans.” As to the source of error, he thinks this is somewhat offset by the “marked general interest centering about the oldest of every tribe.” He found twenty-four per million among the Indians as against three per million among native whites who had reached a hundred, and says, “The relative excess of aged persons (80 years and above) among the Indians would signify only that the infirmities and diseases known ordinarily as those of old age are less grave among them, a conclusion in harmony with general observation.” Among the fifteen tribes embraced in this very careful and valuable investigation, Hrdlicka found in the old far less grayness and baldness and far better teeth than among the whites. They had more wrinkles but their muscular force was better preserved. Many debilitating effects among the whites are less so among the Indians. In general there is some bending and emaciation and the hair grows iron gray or yellowish-gray, but never white. Nor did he find among those of ninety a single one who was demented or helpless. The aged were generally more or less neglected, and had to care for themselves and help the younger. Owing to the diminution of the alveoli and adipose tissue, “the jaw looks more prominent, prognathism disappears, and the face looks shorter.” There is an increase in the nasal index, the nose becomes broader and shorter, the malar bones more prominent. The eyes lose their luster and generally become narrowed, with adhesions at the canthi, particularly the external. The hardening of arteries is certainly not common. Of 716 well preserved males of 65, only 4 per cent showed baldness; and among 377 women there was but one slightly bald, the baldness being about equally common on vertex and forehead.

In W. I. Thomas’s Source Book for Social Origins containing articles by various authors, we are told that among some of the Australian tribes old age is a very prominent factor in preëminence. After they have become feeble the old may have great authority, somewhat in proportion to what they know of ancient lore, magic, medicine, and especially if they are totem heads. Their authority is not patriarchal, and yet among the Yakuts, whether they are rich or poor, good or bad, the old are sometimes beaten by their children, especially if feeble-minded. On the other hand, a weak man of seventy may beat his forty-year-old son who is strong and rich but in awe of his parent because he has so much to inherit from him. The transfer of authority and property to the son often comes very late. The greatest number of suicides is among the old people. A man who beat his mother said, “Let her cry and go hungry. She made me cry more than once and beat me for trifles,” etc.

In this volume we are told, too, that even the Fuegians, who in times of scarcity kill and eat their old women for food, are generally affectionate, and until the whites interfered with their social order the old often had considerable authority. They sometimes prepare programs for ceremonials, which are very strictly observed by a hundred younger men. In some Australian tribes, too, a man’s authority generally increases with age; and this is true, though less frequently, of women. The old enforce the strictest marriage rules and have much influence over the thoughts and feelings of the tribes. The old men often sit in a circle and speak on public matters, one after another, the young men standing outside in silence. A few old men may retire to discuss secret matters of importance. Offenders are often brought before them for trial and sentence. The old men of a tribe often band themselves together and by working on the superstitions of the tribe secure for themselves not only comfort but unbounded influence. In the famous Duk-Duk ceremonial they alone were in the secret, and all others were impressed with the supernatural character of the actors in these rites.

Ploss and Bartels[42] amplify the great changes senescence brings to women. Age not only obliterates race but sex. It often makes the most beautiful into the most ugly, for handsome old women among primitives are unknown. Children dread them. They often become careless of looks, the hand is claw-like, etc. A widespread German superstition is that if an old woman crosses the path of a hunter he will get nothing. They are ominous for marriages and some neurotics cannot look at them. They are sometimes said to have seven lives. Hans Sachs in poetry and Cranach in painting, in describing the fountains of youth, represent chiefly old women entering on the one side with every sign of decrepitude and coming out on the other beautiful, with wonderful toilets, and sometimes immediately engaging in orgies. Old women in early times sometimes had a guild, devised means of conjuration, made pacts or leagues with the devil, presided over the Walpurgis festivals, conjured with magic words, had evil eyes, knew strange brews, sometimes committed all kinds of lasciviousness with devils, might transform themselves into shapes as attractive as Circe for Ulysses or Medea for Jason, or take the more ominous forms of Hecate and Lamea. These maleficent creatures often allied themselves with black cats, serpents, owls, bats, had their salves and witch sabbaths, etc.

Frazer approaches this subject from a different angle. In the second chapter of his volume entitled The Dying God he tells us that in Fiji self-immolation is by no means rare, and the Fijians believe that as they leave this life they will remain ever after. This is a powerful motive to escape from decrepitude or from a crippled condition by voluntary death. “The custom of voluntary suicide on the part of the old men, which is among their most extraordinary usages, is connected with their superstitions regarding a future life.” To this must be added the contempt that attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the wrongs and insults that await those who are no longer able to protect themselves. So when a man feels age creeping on, so that he can no longer fully discharge the duties or enjoy the pleasures of life, he calls his relations, tells them he is worn out and useless, that they are ashamed of him, and he is determined to be buried. So on an appointed day they meet and bury him alive. In the New Hebrides the aged were buried alive at their own request. “It was considered a disgrace to a family of an old chief if he was not buried alive.” A Jewish tribe of Abyssinia never let a person die a natural death, for if any of their relatives was near expiring the priest of the tribe was called to cut his throat. If this ceremony was omitted, they believed the departed soul had not entered the mansions of the blessed. Heraclitus thought that the souls of those who die in battle are purer than those who die of disease. In a South American tribe, when a man is at the point of death his nearest relatives break his spine with an axe, for to die a natural death is the greatest misfortune. In Paraguay, when a man grows weary of life, a feast is made, with revelry and dancing, and the man is gummed and feathered with the plumage of many birds and a huge jar is fixed in the ground, the mouth of which is closed over him with baked clay. Thus he goes to his doom “more joyful and gladsome than to his first nuptials.”

With a tribe in northeastern Asia, when a man feels his last hour has come, he must either kill himself or be killed by a friend. In another tribe he requests his son or some near relative to dispose of him, choosing the manner of death he prefers. So his friends and neighbors assemble and he is stabbed, strangled, or otherwise slain. Elsewhere, if a man dies a natural death, his corpse must be wounded, so that he may seem to be received with the same honors in the next world as if he had died in battle, as Odin wanted for his disciples. The Wends once killed their aged parents and other kinsfolk and boiled and ate their bodies, and the old folk “preferred to die thus rather than drag out a weary life of poverty and decrepitude.” Kings are killed when their strength fails. The people of Congo believed that if their pontiff died a natural death, the earth would perish, since he sustained it by his power and merit, and that everything would be annihilated. So his successor entered his house and slew him with a rope or club. “The king must not be allowed to become ill or senile lest with his diminishing vigor the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the field, and man, stricken with disease, should die.” So the king who showed signs of illness or failing strength was put to death.