ABSTRACT
CONTINUITY of settlement and economy does not by any means involve continuity of the political and social order. Indeed changes in the social order must at once have given rise to changes in political structure, and must have caused national characteristics and new administrative problems to become of decisive importance. This is the essence of the great problem of Kultur-geschichte which we are considering. If the former and all too naïve theory of a catastrophe has become untenable, and if we have proved that no complete destruction of the older order occurred, then the great question as to how the new order came about acquires a different significance.
