android - Material Design backward compatibility

Question

From examples provided on the Android Developer pages I see that new Views, like the RecyclerView, are backward compatible (android.support.v7.widget.RecyclerView).

Are all the new things introduced in Material Design backward compatible (to which version)?

Answer 1

Updating this answer as Lollipop OS is officially released with support libraries, which you can use inside your project to provide compatibility to older versions.

Support library: v7 appcompat library

This library adds support for the Action Bar user interface design pattern. This library includes support for material design user interface implementations.

If you are using Android Studio then you just need to include below dependency identifier:

com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.+