In linguistics, scholars use various techniques to attribute language elements to their ancient sources. Has anyone attempted to do this with cultural elements?

For example, the ancient Romans were known for being stubborn, rules fanatics, relatively culturally inclusive, to name a few. There are stereotypes of modern day Italians that both match and diverge from Roman culture from what I can tell.

Ancient Mongolian culture was unique although I am not going to attempt to summarize it due to lack of knowledge. It seems like present day Mongolia has retained a lot of elements of Mongol culture, possibly more so than Italy despite both civilizations conquering the known world of their time.

Has there been any attempt to quantify this type of observation?

Some thoughts:

• When and why did Germans become known for 'engineering'?
• Do western European cultures have similar volatility to other cultures? e.g. do they change faster or slower?

obviously these questions involve huge generalizations, but it's probably because I am asking the question wrong.