Not sure how to formulate what I want to ask, so please advice if I should change the question: looking at microsocial behaviour today, we follow a lot of informal rules, practices and typical behaviours. For instance when sitting together at the dinner table with a group of people, it is polite to talk, handing the salt, talking about positive things, smile. When there is nothing else to talk we may do smalltalk, talk about the weather.
So question: how similar was the microsocial culture 500 years ago in, say, Europe? If you would put the people from the past into today's clothes and made them talk today's languages, what differences would be still observable? Has this topic been studied in the literature to some extent?