The book advertised here is an abridgement, which I have never seen. The author addresses cultures in organic groups, e.g. Indoeuropean, Circumpolar, Semitic, etc., and shows how the characteristics of their earliest known forms propagate through their subsequent branchings only slowly modified in each of the branches, although still recognizable in their differentiated subcultures even today. If you can find a copy to read, grab it. Linton, by the way, was survived by his widow, who completed the final stages of publication, and owned the rights to it.It shoule not be too much trouble for e.g. Amazon, to track down her heirs and assigns, and to try to acquire rights to digitalization -- hopefully in its original content, rather than abridged.. The result would be an important addition to the corpus of freebie ebooks.