In its present form, it presupposes a development of probably thousands of years. Assuredly, therefore, the Australian should not be included in a chapter on primitive man. He will rather claim our attention in the next chapter, as a well-defined type of the totemic age. Indeed, he is beginning, in part, to lose even the characteristics of this age, mainly, no doubt as a result of racial fusion, whose influence is here also in evidence. Although the races of Australia are unquestionably not primitive, as was formerly believed and is still held in certain quarters, there are other parts of the earth which, in all probability, really harbour men who are primitive in that relative sense of the term which alone, of course, we are justified in using. If one were to connect the discovery of this primitive man with any single name, the honour would belong to a German traveller and investigator, George Schweinfurth. He was the first to discover a really primitive tribe--that is, one which remained practically untouched by external cultural influences. When Schweinfurth, sailing up the Upper Nile in 1870, listened to the narratives of the Nubian sailors in charge of his boat, he repeatedly heard accounts of a nation of dwarfs, of people two feet tall (so the exaggerated reports went), living in the impenetrable forests beyond the great lakes which constitute the source of the Nile. Schweinfurth was at once reminded of the old legends regarding pygmies. Such legends are mentioned even by Homer and are introduced also into the writings of Herodotus and of Aristotle. Aristotle, indeed, expressly says that these dwarf peoples of Central Africa exist in reality, and not merely in tales. When Schweinfurth arrived in the country of the Monbuttus, he was actually fortunate enough to gain sight of these pygmies. It is true, they did not exactly correspond to the fantastic descriptions of the sailors--descriptions such as are current here and there even to-day. The sailors represented the pygmies as having long beards, reaching to the earth, and gigantic heads; in short, they imputed to them the characteristics of the dwarf gnome, who appears also in German folk-lore. In reality, it was found that the pygmies are, indeed, small--far below the average normal size of man--but that they are of excellent proportions, have small heads, and almost beardless faces.