This chronology has much to commend it besides its almost daring conservatism; especially the clarity of its consistent recognition of certain cultural processes. Five principles and three extensions are set up by Müller:
1. The south [of Europe, with the Near East] was the vanguard and dispensing source of culture; the peripheral regions, especially in the north [of Europe] followed and received.
2. The elements of southern culture were transmitted to the north only in reduction and extract.
3. They were also subject to modifications.
4. These elements of southern culture sometimes appeared in the remoter areas with great vigor and new qualities of their own.
5. But such remote appearances are later in time than the occurrence of the same elements in the south.
6. Forms of artifacts or ornaments may survive for a long time with but little modification, especially if transmitted to new territory.
7. Separate elements characteristic of successive periods in a culture center may occur contemporaneously in the marginal areas, their diffusion having occurred at different rates of speed.
8. Marginal cultures thus present a curious mixture of traits whose original age is great and of others that are much newer; the latter, in fact, occasionally reach the peripheries earlier than old traits.
The basic idea of these formulations is that of the gradual radiation of culture from creative focal centers to backward marginal areas, without the original dependence of the peripheries wholly precluding their subsequent independent development. It is obvious that this point of view is substantially identical with that which has been held to in the presentation of native American culture in the preceding chapter.