The rule of the elders appears to have been extremely prevalent in the earlier phases of culture. So much so that it may even be set down as the most characteristic trait of the upper savagery and of the lower barbarism; whether it takes the elaborately institutionalised form of a settled gerontocracy, as among the Australian blacks, with sharply defined class divisions and perquisites and a consistent subjection of women and children; or the looser customary rule of the Elders, with a degree of deference and circumspection on the part of the younger generation and an uncertain conventional inferiority of women and children, as seen among the pagans of the Malay peninsula,[22] the Eskimo of the Arctic seaboard,[23] the Mincopies of the Andamans,[24] or, on a somewhat higher level, the Pueblo Indians of the American South-west.[25] Illustrative instances of such an inchoate organisation of authority are very widely distributed, but the communities that follow such a naïve scheme of life are commonly neither large, powerful, wealthy, nor much in the public eye. The presumption is that the sense of authenticity which pervades these and similar cultures, amounting to a degree of tabu on innovation, has had much to do with the notably slow advance of technology among savage peoples. Such appears presumably to have been the prevalent run of the facts throughout the stone age in all quarters of the Earth. It is not altogether plain just what are the innate predispositions chiefly involved in this primitive social control which at its untroubled best develops into a “gerontocracy.” There can apparently be little question but that its prime motive force is the parental bent, expressing itself in a naïve impulsive surveillance of the common interests of the group and a tutelage of the incoming generation. But here as in other social relations the self-regarding sentiments unavoidably come into play; so that (_a_) the tutelage of the elders takes something of an authoritative tone and blends self-aggrandisement with their quasi-parental solicitude, giving an institutional outcome which makes the young generation subservient to the elders, ostensibly for the mutual and collective good of both parties to the relation; (_b_) if predatory or warlike exploit in any degree becomes habitual to the community the sentiment of self-aggrandisement gets the upper hand, and subservience to the able-bodied elders becomes the dominant note in this relation of tutelage, and their parental interest in the welfare of the incoming generation in a corresponding degree goes into abeyance under the pressure of the appropriate sentiments of pugnacity and self-seeking, giving rise to a coercive régime of a more or less ruthless character; (_c_) correlatively, along with unwearying insistence on their own prerogatives and collective discretion, on the part of the elders, there goes, on the part of the community at large, a correspondingly