This idea is based upon the imaginary primitive state of our ancestors, but this conception is more an ethnographical phenomenon than a scientific fact. This idea was quite logical when it was not known how old mankind was or how old might the language be. The highest imagination supplied it with «primitive» consonants and «primitive» vowels, but still containing a very limited number of words for designating the most elementary conceptions. Yet attempts have been made at the reconstruction of primitive mentality, which, according to these reconstructions, looked rather like pure imagination, a distorted image of their creators and not actually existing realities. In fact, no one people may survive in the conditions of «savage» life with the philosophical conceptions and theories regarding the outer world with which «savages» are supplied. Linguists did not want to be behind these pseudo-scientific achievements and did their best to put in the mouth of hypothetic ancestors their own ideas about the primitivity of these ancestors. However, the accumulation of facts regarding non-European languages and facts regarding the history of the Indo-European languages have greatly changed the point of view of general linguists [63]. To the great disappointment of the protagonists of primitive languages, it has been found that the most «primitive» people, who do not know the use of metals, may have an extremely complex phonetic system and even a more developed dictionary in terms of vital importance, as, e.g., terms for hunting animals, topography, social institutions, etc. Then, when they retreated to the last rampart, it was suggested that abstract terms must be lacking. However, further investigations have shown that even this suggestion cannot be supported by facts, — the primitive people do possess terms for abstract conceptions, as well as a developed system of phonetics, structure, and a dictionary. The earliest Indo-European languages possessed no less a complexity than some of the most modern languages. However, the idea of finding some primitivity in the people who culturally differed did not leave the searchers, and their attention was turned to the fact that some supposedly primitive groups have languages morphologically highly differentiated, while some other groups of old civilization have languages with a relatively simple and, historically speaking, simplified morphology. It was easy to infer that primitive languages are «complex» and civilized languages are «simple.» Other instances of the persistence of the idea of finding characteristics of «primitive» ideal languages may be seen in general linguistic treatises on the history of these theories. With these theoretical presumptions attempts have also been made at the restoration of languages, including the Altaic.
But how lexically simple and phonetically poor, and how complex morphologically might it be if it ever did exist? Of course, it could be as rich as any modern language, except for a special modern terminology which might be richer in some other respects, and it could be more simple from a morphological point of view than modern Turk, Mongol, or Tungus; yet the phonetic system might be something entirely different, for the sounds of a language are subject to variations, and we have no evidence for going further than mediaeval Turk, Mongol, and Manchu, which did not differ very much in this respect from the languages spoken nowadays. One thing is evident — the looking for primitive conceptions in Altaic languages is a tribute to an ethnographical European conception regarding the people as a distinct complex and not a logical outcome of scientific inquiry.
63. This has been very definitely expressed by J. Vendryes.