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.
Subsequent to Schweinfurth's discovery, similar tribes were found in various parts of the earth. Emin Pasha, together with his companion Stuhlmann, had the good fortune to be able to observe the pygmies of the Congo more closely even than had been possible for Schweinfurth. In the Negritos of the Philippines a similar dwarf people was discovered. They also are of small stature, and, according to their own belief and that of the neighbouring Malays, are the original inhabitants of their forests. Besides these, there are the inland tribes of the Malay Peninsula, the Semangs and Senoi, and, finally, the Veddahs of Ceylon, studied particularly by the cousins Paul and Fritz Sarasin. All of the peoples just mentioned live in forests and have probably been isolated from civilization for thousands of years. The Bushmen of South Africa, of whom we have long known, also belong to this group, although they have not to the same extent been free from the influence of surrounding peoples. In all these cases we have to do with tribes which at one time probably occupied wider territories, but which have now been crowded back into the forest or wilderness. In addition to these tribes, furthermore, there are remnants of peoples in Hindustan, in Celebes, Sumatra, the Sunda Islands, etc. Concerning these, however, we as yet have little knowledge. In some respects, doubtless, the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands should also be here included, although they cannot, on the whole, be regarded as primitive in the strict sense of the word. This is precluded by their external culture, and especially by their legends, the latter of which point to the influence of Asiatic culture.