The fact that so many Americans so put so much effort into discovering and re-visiting their "roots" surely indicates that the human psyche attaches a deeper meaning to culture or cultural inheritance (I think this may not be the word I want) than simply that which is learned or formally recorded - they are trying to identify something that is part of nature not nurture.

It would also seem that there is a general suspicion of those who adopt in other spheres an inheritance (in this sense) that is alien to them - for example the self professed members of extinct American Indian tribes, who, in full tribal regalia, live in small suburban English houses, rather to the incredulity of their neighbours.