16 ms·

What Did the Past Smell Like?

127 points by dnetesn 6y ago

EleanorLily 6y ago
Scent plays a central role in our everyday life, even acting as a powerful time machine into our own past with its ability to spark long-forgotten memories. But it's also a key tool in telling the stories of others.
- tiaxxl 6y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted. Also see: You Can’t Stop Touching Your Face Because You’re Subconsciously Sniffing Your Hands You might not realize it, but you’re constantly smelling your own hands to learn about the people and world around you https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/you-can-t-stop-touching-your-face-because-you-re-subconsciously-sniffing-your-hands/ https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/you-can-...
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Kid has tv remote in mouth constantly. I guess she’s tasting her tv shows.
- treeman79 6y ago
  migraines periodically give me Extreme heightened senses. For sense of smell. It’s truly amazing how much “detail” there is in every day scents. Can smell food and describe accurately the spices used. Also I can detect the tiniest amounts used from 20 feet away. Shocking people that are using it and don’t even smell it. My personal favorite is a woody car smell Hanger in the car caused me to instantly be jealous. Not of anyone specific, but there is an intense primal feeling of someone after what’s mine. Without migraine I don’t notice any of it.
  - codesnik 6y ago
    I used to have the same kind of migraines. So much sharp smells everywhere, smell people across the street, things like that. Sadly headache didn't allow to enjoy that superability, even for normally pleasant smells.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      It’s truly a horrible experience. There is fantasy series “Mist Born” where one character has enhanced senses. All the pluses and minuses that goes with it. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Well maybe perfume manufacturers.
sunstone 6y ago
Horse poop.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  Horse manure is pleasant in comparison to any of what a city would have smelled like. I grew up in rural Ontario and the eminent smell of horse manure is a surefire sign that spring has sprung. It smells like home!
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    I'm going to agree with you to a degree. I used to live a mile or two from an organic sheep farm in Oregon. On overcast days and the wind went my direction, it wasn't that bad. I wouldn't say pleasant. But it was just the strong smell of cut grass with odd components to manure that weren't that bad. However, on a clear, hot summer day and the wind came my direction... no. Add in where it rained a lot the day before... those were the days when I felt like it was time to have a massive lamb and mutton BBQ party to make sure I don't smell it again. Though, still better than smelling your average public toilet. So yea. Somewhat agree.
    - Vrondi 6y ago
      The horse manure in the streets would have been one of the more pleasant aromas compared to the human feces and urine smells everywhere, the dog urine and feces smells everywhere, the rotting garbage, etc.
      - NoOneNew 6y ago
        I'm laughing and terrified of the fact we are all talking about what shit on the street is better smelling. I'm still going to ultimately defer to none as default before picking and choosing. And yes, I can foresee horse shit as being the preferred out of everything else... which again... terrifying.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      I'll have to defer that one to you, for sure. I've been back in Toronto for about ten years now so my view of the countryside I grew up in is definitely through some rose-coloured lenses. (I'm graciously moving somewhere smaller, but not quite back where I grew up soon and am deeply looking forward to it—smells and all)
cbanek 6y ago
I love that the picture of the top is of smelling a book. I love book smell. Although books are heavy, there's a definite smell to libraries that I think calms me right down. I miss that smell these days.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  Why do you miss it? Don't you own any books? Or do you live somewhere where libraries are closed because of an overreaction to COVID?
  - cbanek 6y ago
    I do own books, and there's the individual smell of each book, but I think not having enough books to have a library, there's something missing from the mingling of scents of books. Right now I'm just happy using the electronic resources of my amazing library.
lqet 6y ago
According to Patrick Süskind, 18th century Paris smelled like this: > [...] a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlours stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. > People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the 18th century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life, that was not accompanied by stench. [0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-Murder-Patrick-Suskind/dp/0394550846/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1607966211&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-Murder-Patrick-Suskind/...
- treeman79 6y ago
  Can see why smoking was so popular. One smell your used to is a lot better than all that.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    For those that don't know, fermented tobacco smells way different than modern "cigarettes". Many non-smokers actually do enjoy the smell of an unlit real cigar, some even like the smoke smell (to a degree). As a cigar smoker, I could never smoke a Marlboro cig or of that ilk. Those smell horrid. All jokes aside, it's almost like the difference between organic and "conventional". So them using smoking as an air freshener is a pretty legit way of covering up horse shit stench. Before anyone says it, yes it's still bad for me, no I don't care.
testfoobar 6y ago
You can go to any city in a developing nation to get a similar experience. I've been in homes where the toilets abut the street and drain directly into an open sewer that runs along the street. Those sewers pool into a "pond" at the end of the street or subdivision. Then layer on the smells of farming, cooking, heating and animal processing and you get some really dominant odors. On one trip, my local hosts picked me up at the airport. I spent the ride wondering whether to ask them why the air smelled so incredibly bad. The sharp smells were a mix of sewage and burning flesh. But my hosts were happy, sharing treats with me and excited to have me visit. I felt it would be rude to ask such a question. (Location unnamed.) Another location was downwind of a sugarcane processing plant. You may think the sweet smell of sugarcane would be all that you would smell. You would be wrong. Olfactory adaptation set in pretty quickly though. I didn't notice the smells after the first couple of days. Our "smells" in the modernized west are tame by comparison.
- bane 6y ago
  In some countries without sufficient landfill systems, the pervasive smell of burning trash also fills the air...and you also get used to it pretty quick as well. It's both kind of amazing and kind of expected how quickly we adapt to different sent environments. Humans tend to saturate our ability to smell novel things quickly, which is why it's often hard to track things down by smell -- we quickly lose the ability to smell it.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  I grew up like 10-15 miles from a sugar beet processing plant. It smelled like burning garbage when the wind was blowing in the right direction.
- vram22 6y ago
  > downwind of a sugarcane processing plant I've come across that smell while on trains or cars, from sugar mills nearby. I've heard it is from bagasse, a waste product of the factory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse
Beefin 6y ago
I wonder if anybody uses smell as a mnemonic device when studying. Anybody have any examples of doing this themselves? It seems that since smell is so closely linked to memory we should be taking advantage of this.
- scollet 6y ago
  Coffee
NoOneNew 6y ago
I was a little disappointed with this article. Didn't really have too much of substance, but I love the concept of it. Personal anecdote, being a Polish-American, I've experienced the vast difference in smell landscape the article talks about. For whatever the reason, Polish culture loves flowers. You look up Polish artwork, folk dress, whatever, flowers, EVERYWHERE. Man, woman, doesn't matter. Flowers. The god damn lace curtains aren't curtains without flowers. Houses needed actual flowers too... or it's not a house. Same with Christmas. Americans are fine with fake trees. Every Pole and Polish-American I know and have known, a fake tree is a step towards Satanism. It's just... no. Christmas isn't Christmas without the smell of a tree. That and our cooking methods are vastly different from standard American foods. More earthy smells due to root veg and mushroom dishes. That gets ingrained into the walls. I'm going to assume this was due to the prevalence of horse shit and dumping human shit outside so much back in the hay-day. Which does make sense since in the medieval era there was a large time period of thought that disease was carried by fowl smelling scents. By that logic, they would try making homes smell as nice as possible... plus horse shit stinks. That's good enough reason alone. So all of this is so ingrained in me, American homes aren't homes without some sort of earthy smell to them. The plastic, corporate smell is your normal US home (not all, plenty do like having plants inside... just not enough people do this) with their fake candles and air fresheners. It's an "empty" smell is the best I've ever been able to describe it. While a house with actual flowers or plants gives it a "fuller" or "lived in" smell. Obviously this is all due to personal experience and how I was raised, but I can't stand buildings that don't have a few plants growing inside of it. I swear I can instantly tell, without seeing it, that there's a plant inside of a house. Even if it's not fragrant. Personally the whole "spices" thing is... eh. Nothing wrong with the smells, just they get annoying or boring after a while. Seems like that's more of a Western Europe thing. Anyways, I learned my mood is loosely tied to the long term smells I'm around. I get a bit... agitated? More annoyed I think is the better term, when around the fake, empty smells. Outside or in a building with plants growing in it, I'm fine or just never really noticed. How much that's just me being crazy, I don't know. Like I said, anecdote.
- cmrx64 6y ago
  i enjoy this anecdote :) i'm american, grew up in a forest, moved to cities 6 years ago, and i get exactly what you mean by the "empty" smell. entire buildings that reek of (what i presume are) building materials offgassing. one nice thing about early COVID is when everyone stopped driving briefly and you could smell fresh sweet spring air in a downtown.
1970-01-01 6y ago
A: Let trash pile-up in the streets and remove your sink p-trap. More history here: http://www.sewerhistory.org/time-lines/tracking-down-the-roots-of-our-sanitary-sewers/part-2-the-middle-ages/ http://www.sewerhistory.org/time-lines/tracking-down-the-roo...
godelski 6y ago
One thing I've always wondered about is what other worlds smell like. Currently we only know two, Earth and the moon [0]. It seems like something that would actually be a real big human factor but is completely glossed over in stories if it isn't about the planet smelling terrible and more a foreshadowing element (I do remember reading one story where it was mentioned in a casual but I forgot which one). [0] https://www.space.com/26932-moon-smell-apollo-lunar-aroma.html https://www.space.com/26932-moon-smell-apollo-lunar-aroma.ht...
- mncharity 6y ago
  This[1] article mentions a lab at ASU - might be of interest (I didn't explore it). I wonder if there's a market for a "scratch and sniff" astronomy children's book? There's also a smell on ISS EVA suits upon repressurization. Last I heard, the mechanism was unclear. There was a "smell of space" perfume kickstarter[2], and then "of moon", but IIRC both were working from descriptions rather than chemistry. I saw someone ask, what would a Falcon 9 first stage smell/taste like after it landed. It reminded me that most science education content is very sensorially impoverished. Elsewhere, someone reported their half-century-ago geology professor, as emphasizing that you should bring all your senses to bear, and taste your rocks. Material sensory properties ("smooth vs rough", etc) are taught in Kindergarten. But the descriptive ontologies are ad hoc, so I've wondered what leverage might be obtained by swapping in something more principled from industry. So what about about smell? Either in the spirit of material properties, or more "artist's eye for color", or music appreciation? [1] https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/outer-space-smells https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/outer-space-smells [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaudespace/what-does-outer-space-smell-like-nasa-designed-fragrance https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaudespace/what-does-ou...
caymanjim 6y ago
I've traveled in a lot of developing countries. I imagine many of the smells I've encountered in small cities are the same as they've been for centuries or even millenia. The most prominent smells are sewage (from open sewers and natural waterways loaded with sewage); agricultural (manure from both farms and from animals still used in transport); and burning garbage (still common in many rural developing areas). The biggest shift is likely the replacement of manure from transport animals (horses, oxen, etc.) with unregulated exhaust from transport (trucks to be sure, but primarily from two-cycle engines on small motorcycles and tuk-tuks). I can't imagine what a large metropolis would have smelled like before sewage was largely contained and before internal combustion engines replaced animals.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  speaking of manure big cities in the not so distant past: > in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great...
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
The smell of excrement has the chemical signature of ‘indole’ and it’s also present in jasmine. The fragrance of jasmine is ..how can I say this..I can only say it like this..borderline narcotic to me. I can never have enough. Poop..not so much. Another interesting smell is that of truffle mushrooms. They sell for $2000-3600/lb. in the past, the French used female pigs to dig them out of the earth because it was intoxicating for them..it smelt like the scent of a horny male pig’s pheromones. But the pigs would gorge them before the truffle hunter can get to them. Now ..we use dogs. Terriers don’t care much for rutting male pigs. However, the aroma of a ripe white truffle will have any gourmand worth his/her salt swooning. I remember saving enough money to buy a nugget of Italian white truffle. Trifola Alba[1] for what was an obscene amount of money considering that I had to save to buy it. I had it with fluffy omelette and saved it in a bowl of risotto rice to stretch it. My plan was to have a nice creamy white truffle fettuccine and then the perfumed risotto would also be a treat. I intended to stretch that little nugget as far as I could and hoped I would have enough for a grilled sandwich too. I did my research and found that a bottle of sweet Hungarian Tokay[2] would suit my menu which included a foie pate and a potato galette with goose fat and garlic. But I didn’t have enough money. I was living in expensive central London W1 at this time and working in a restaurant and attending culinary school. So I walked everywhere, lived on mcD fries and strawberry milkshakes to save enough for the Tokaji. After about a week, I gather my supplies and come to my room that I rented only to find the door ajar. The landlady was standing outside and she was so mad. The cleaning woman had pulled out everything I ever owned and was under the bed. She had come to clean and she thought there was a dead rodent in the room. The raw milk Camembert that had been ripening in the window sill as part of the menu was the culprit. I calmed her down and threw the offending cheese out. I did have my dinner for one sans Camembert. And as a peace offering, I gave the bowl of perfumed risotto rice to my landlady with the remaining nub of truffle. We were friends again. But what is so magical about truffles? It lingers inside your nostrils long after you have had your fill. I did..for almost a week and I can beckon it on demand now when I am feeling particularly nostalgic. Is it a brain signal that gets triggered? Is it some kind of hard wired smell code that just have to be uncovered because it’s of the earth. It feels so ‘ancient’ and ‘prehistoric’ as though this old fungus is some silent hidden part of your DNA. I don’t feel that way about all other mushrooms tho’..maybe it’s because it’s rare and expensive. Entirely psychological. Or maybe it’s personal because I created a memory and story around it. I have no idea..but if you ever have had truffle..black or white..you’d know what I mean. How does a truffle smell.. [...] The smell of good truffles has been historically hard to describe, with comparisons ranging from mold to sweet body odor to sulphurous garlic. The fact is, it isn't really the fungus itself that is all that tasty, but rather the gas it gives off, part of which is produced by the fungi themselves and part of which is produced by bacteria and microbes living within. One major component is the molecule androstenone, described as having an aroma somewhere between sandalwood, vanilla and urine. Androstenone is also produced by randy male pigs, which is why female pigs make such good truffle hunters. Read More: https://www.mashed.com/59070/untold-truth-truffles/ https://www.mashed.com/59070/untold-truth-truffles/[..] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_truffle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_truffle [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369840 I remember this article because I commented there too and didn’t find it here.
solid_rugs 6y ago
Teen Spirit?
golemiprague 6y ago
You don't need to go to the past, there is smell variation between places in the world. Every place smells different, sometimes because of different types of food and BO, humidity, materials, nature around it, sewage system, temperature, heating/cooling systems and many other factors.
danans 6y ago
I visited a beautifully restored and maintained castle in Northern Germany not long ago. After the tour, as I was walking through the courtyard, I noticed out the corner of my eye what appeared to be a pile of horse manure. On closer inspection it was actually steel statue of a pile of horse manure, put there as a reminder of what would have covered the courtyard in its heyday.
blippage 6y ago
I visited ancient Pompeii about a decade ago. The roads were basically open sewers. Nice. There were stepping stones at regular intervals so that you could cross from one side of the pavement to the other. There stones were spaced so that the wheels of a horse-drawn cart could travel unimpeded.
dkobia 6y ago
In the old coastal town of Lamu, Kenya that is inundated by donkeys, you get a rough idea of what a town full of horses and fish smells like. The air is filled with an almost oppressive smell of poop and fish. It is unquestionably unpleasant. In some other towns, you are reminded of the smell of exhaust from old trucks belching pollution into the air. And lest you forget, you'll be reminded of a modern western construct - deodorant.
mncharity 6y ago
Picture Manhattan over several centuries. Odoriferous streets strewn with garbage, and excrement, and carcasses. Feeding masses of free-roaming pigs. Winters were colder then, so waste accumulated over the winter, frozen solid. Now imagine the weeks, after the spring thaw, until the pigs caught up with their sanitation backlog. Even for people of the time, it was thought remarkable.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
TwoBit 6y ago
What did the 1960s smell like? Nicotine.
- userbinator 6y ago
  That and the distinctive, also pleasant yet carcinogenic smell of chlorinated solvents.
unknown2374 6y ago
Off-topic: but why does nautil.us still on unsecured HTTP?
sharker8 6y ago
Disappointed! Thought we were going to talk about the new riddle of induction's grue and bleen only for smells. Like what if something smells like garbage before time t and delicious food after time t.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
The best old-time country smell is fresh hey in a barn. The worst modern country smell is the corporate pig farm.
S_A_P 6y ago
Go to a stable. Horses urinate and defecate at will. They dont normally shower or brush their teeth. There is a smell, but its not punch you in the face bad. Humans can smell really bad on all fronts, but noseblindness is a thing and probably for this reason. You really only smell exaggerated odor after a few minutes. When I was a student at Texas A&M I worked for the on campus car rental agency. The worst place on campus was the chicken refuse area, and it smelled bad- like mile away bad. Even there, you would stop smelling it after a few minutes only to catch a wiff or two a few hours later. Point being, it probably smelled awful, but not for long.
steveBK123 6y ago
I’d imagine the worst block of NYC during trash day in peak summer heat.. but much worse :-)

127 points by dnetesn 6y ago

Scent plays a central role in our everyday life, even acting as a powerful time machine into our own past with its ability to spark long-forgotten memories. But it's also a key tool in telling the stories of others.

tiaxxl 6y ago
Not sure why you got downvoted. Also see: You Can’t Stop Touching Your Face Because You’re Subconsciously Sniffing Your Hands You might not realize it, but you’re constantly smelling your own hands to learn about the people and world around you https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/you-can-t-stop-touching-your-face-because-you-re-subconsciously-sniffing-your-hands/ https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/you-can-...
- treeman79 6y ago
  Kid has tv remote in mouth constantly. I guess she’s tasting her tv shows.
treeman79 6y ago
migraines periodically give me Extreme heightened senses. For sense of smell. It’s truly amazing how much “detail” there is in every day scents. Can smell food and describe accurately the spices used. Also I can detect the tiniest amounts used from 20 feet away. Shocking people that are using it and don’t even smell it. My personal favorite is a woody car smell Hanger in the car caused me to instantly be jealous. Not of anyone specific, but there is an intense primal feeling of someone after what’s mine. Without migraine I don’t notice any of it.
- codesnik 6y ago
  I used to have the same kind of migraines. So much sharp smells everywhere, smell people across the street, things like that. Sadly headache didn't allow to enjoy that superability, even for normally pleasant smells.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    It’s truly a horrible experience. There is fantasy series “Mist Born” where one character has enhanced senses. All the pluses and minuses that goes with it. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Well maybe perfume manufacturers.

sunstone 6y ago

Horse poop.

52-6F-62 6y ago
Horse manure is pleasant in comparison to any of what a city would have smelled like. I grew up in rural Ontario and the eminent smell of horse manure is a surefire sign that spring has sprung. It smells like home!
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  I'm going to agree with you to a degree. I used to live a mile or two from an organic sheep farm in Oregon. On overcast days and the wind went my direction, it wasn't that bad. I wouldn't say pleasant. But it was just the strong smell of cut grass with odd components to manure that weren't that bad. However, on a clear, hot summer day and the wind came my direction... no. Add in where it rained a lot the day before... those were the days when I felt like it was time to have a massive lamb and mutton BBQ party to make sure I don't smell it again. Though, still better than smelling your average public toilet. So yea. Somewhat agree.
  - Vrondi 6y ago
    The horse manure in the streets would have been one of the more pleasant aromas compared to the human feces and urine smells everywhere, the dog urine and feces smells everywhere, the rotting garbage, etc.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      I'm laughing and terrified of the fact we are all talking about what shit on the street is better smelling. I'm still going to ultimately defer to none as default before picking and choosing. And yes, I can foresee horse shit as being the preferred out of everything else... which again... terrifying.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    I'll have to defer that one to you, for sure. I've been back in Toronto for about ten years now so my view of the countryside I grew up in is definitely through some rose-coloured lenses. (I'm graciously moving somewhere smaller, but not quite back where I grew up soon and am deeply looking forward to it—smells and all)

cbanek 6y ago

I love that the picture of the top is of smelling a book. I love book smell. Although books are heavy, there's a definite smell to libraries that I think calms me right down. I miss that smell these days.

kwhitefoot 6y ago
Why do you miss it? Don't you own any books? Or do you live somewhere where libraries are closed because of an overreaction to COVID?
- cbanek 6y ago
  I do own books, and there's the individual smell of each book, but I think not having enough books to have a library, there's something missing from the mingling of scents of books. Right now I'm just happy using the electronic resources of my amazing library.

lqet 6y ago

According to Patrick Süskind, 18th century Paris smelled like this: > [...] a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlours stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. > People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the 18th century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life, that was not accompanied by stench. [0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-Murder-Patrick-Suskind/dp/0394550846/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1607966211&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-Murder-Patrick-Suskind/...

treeman79 6y ago
Can see why smoking was so popular. One smell your used to is a lot better than all that.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  For those that don't know, fermented tobacco smells way different than modern "cigarettes". Many non-smokers actually do enjoy the smell of an unlit real cigar, some even like the smoke smell (to a degree). As a cigar smoker, I could never smoke a Marlboro cig or of that ilk. Those smell horrid. All jokes aside, it's almost like the difference between organic and "conventional". So them using smoking as an air freshener is a pretty legit way of covering up horse shit stench. Before anyone says it, yes it's still bad for me, no I don't care.

testfoobar 6y ago

You can go to any city in a developing nation to get a similar experience. I've been in homes where the toilets abut the street and drain directly into an open sewer that runs along the street. Those sewers pool into a "pond" at the end of the street or subdivision. Then layer on the smells of farming, cooking, heating and animal processing and you get some really dominant odors. On one trip, my local hosts picked me up at the airport. I spent the ride wondering whether to ask them why the air smelled so incredibly bad. The sharp smells were a mix of sewage and burning flesh. But my hosts were happy, sharing treats with me and excited to have me visit. I felt it would be rude to ask such a question. (Location unnamed.) Another location was downwind of a sugarcane processing plant. You may think the sweet smell of sugarcane would be all that you would smell. You would be wrong. Olfactory adaptation set in pretty quickly though. I didn't notice the smells after the first couple of days. Our "smells" in the modernized west are tame by comparison.

bane 6y ago
In some countries without sufficient landfill systems, the pervasive smell of burning trash also fills the air...and you also get used to it pretty quick as well. It's both kind of amazing and kind of expected how quickly we adapt to different sent environments. Humans tend to saturate our ability to smell novel things quickly, which is why it's often hard to track things down by smell -- we quickly lose the ability to smell it.
RandallBrown 6y ago
I grew up like 10-15 miles from a sugar beet processing plant. It smelled like burning garbage when the wind was blowing in the right direction.
vram22 6y ago
> downwind of a sugarcane processing plant I've come across that smell while on trains or cars, from sugar mills nearby. I've heard it is from bagasse, a waste product of the factory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse

Beefin 6y ago

I wonder if anybody uses smell as a mnemonic device when studying. Anybody have any examples of doing this themselves? It seems that since smell is so closely linked to memory we should be taking advantage of this.

scollet 6y ago
Coffee

NoOneNew 6y ago

I was a little disappointed with this article. Didn't really have too much of substance, but I love the concept of it. Personal anecdote, being a Polish-American, I've experienced the vast difference in smell landscape the article talks about. For whatever the reason, Polish culture loves flowers. You look up Polish artwork, folk dress, whatever, flowers, EVERYWHERE. Man, woman, doesn't matter. Flowers. The god damn lace curtains aren't curtains without flowers. Houses needed actual flowers too... or it's not a house. Same with Christmas. Americans are fine with fake trees. Every Pole and Polish-American I know and have known, a fake tree is a step towards Satanism. It's just... no. Christmas isn't Christmas without the smell of a tree. That and our cooking methods are vastly different from standard American foods. More earthy smells due to root veg and mushroom dishes. That gets ingrained into the walls. I'm going to assume this was due to the prevalence of horse shit and dumping human shit outside so much back in the hay-day. Which does make sense since in the medieval era there was a large time period of thought that disease was carried by fowl smelling scents. By that logic, they would try making homes smell as nice as possible... plus horse shit stinks. That's good enough reason alone. So all of this is so ingrained in me, American homes aren't homes without some sort of earthy smell to them. The plastic, corporate smell is your normal US home (not all, plenty do like having plants inside... just not enough people do this) with their fake candles and air fresheners. It's an "empty" smell is the best I've ever been able to describe it. While a house with actual flowers or plants gives it a "fuller" or "lived in" smell. Obviously this is all due to personal experience and how I was raised, but I can't stand buildings that don't have a few plants growing inside of it. I swear I can instantly tell, without seeing it, that there's a plant inside of a house. Even if it's not fragrant. Personally the whole "spices" thing is... eh. Nothing wrong with the smells, just they get annoying or boring after a while. Seems like that's more of a Western Europe thing. Anyways, I learned my mood is loosely tied to the long term smells I'm around. I get a bit... agitated? More annoyed I think is the better term, when around the fake, empty smells. Outside or in a building with plants growing in it, I'm fine or just never really noticed. How much that's just me being crazy, I don't know. Like I said, anecdote.

cmrx64 6y ago
i enjoy this anecdote :) i'm american, grew up in a forest, moved to cities 6 years ago, and i get exactly what you mean by the "empty" smell. entire buildings that reek of (what i presume are) building materials offgassing. one nice thing about early COVID is when everyone stopped driving briefly and you could smell fresh sweet spring air in a downtown.

1970-01-01 6y ago

A: Let trash pile-up in the streets and remove your sink p-trap. More history here: http://www.sewerhistory.org/time-lines/tracking-down-the-roots-of-our-sanitary-sewers/part-2-the-middle-ages/ http://www.sewerhistory.org/time-lines/tracking-down-the-roo...

godelski 6y ago

One thing I've always wondered about is what other worlds smell like. Currently we only know two, Earth and the moon [0]. It seems like something that would actually be a real big human factor but is completely glossed over in stories if it isn't about the planet smelling terrible and more a foreshadowing element (I do remember reading one story where it was mentioned in a casual but I forgot which one). [0] https://www.space.com/26932-moon-smell-apollo-lunar-aroma.html https://www.space.com/26932-moon-smell-apollo-lunar-aroma.ht...

mncharity 6y ago
This[1] article mentions a lab at ASU - might be of interest (I didn't explore it). I wonder if there's a market for a "scratch and sniff" astronomy children's book? There's also a smell on ISS EVA suits upon repressurization. Last I heard, the mechanism was unclear. There was a "smell of space" perfume kickstarter[2], and then "of moon", but IIRC both were working from descriptions rather than chemistry. I saw someone ask, what would a Falcon 9 first stage smell/taste like after it landed. It reminded me that most science education content is very sensorially impoverished. Elsewhere, someone reported their half-century-ago geology professor, as emphasizing that you should bring all your senses to bear, and taste your rocks. Material sensory properties ("smooth vs rough", etc) are taught in Kindergarten. But the descriptive ontologies are ad hoc, so I've wondered what leverage might be obtained by swapping in something more principled from industry. So what about about smell? Either in the spirit of material properties, or more "artist's eye for color", or music appreciation? [1] https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/outer-space-smells https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/outer-space-smells [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaudespace/what-does-outer-space-smell-like-nasa-designed-fragrance https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaudespace/what-does-ou...

caymanjim 6y ago

I've traveled in a lot of developing countries. I imagine many of the smells I've encountered in small cities are the same as they've been for centuries or even millenia. The most prominent smells are sewage (from open sewers and natural waterways loaded with sewage); agricultural (manure from both farms and from animals still used in transport); and burning garbage (still common in many rural developing areas). The biggest shift is likely the replacement of manure from transport animals (horses, oxen, etc.) with unregulated exhaust from transport (trucks to be sure, but primarily from two-cycle engines on small motorcycles and tuk-tuks). I can't imagine what a large metropolis would have smelled like before sewage was largely contained and before internal combustion engines replaced animals.

ithkuil 6y ago
speaking of manure big cities in the not so distant past: > in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/ https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great...

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

The smell of excrement has the chemical signature of ‘indole’ and it’s also present in jasmine. The fragrance of jasmine is ..how can I say this..I can only say it like this..borderline narcotic to me. I can never have enough. Poop..not so much. Another interesting smell is that of truffle mushrooms. They sell for $2000-3600/lb. in the past, the French used female pigs to dig them out of the earth because it was intoxicating for them..it smelt like the scent of a horny male pig’s pheromones. But the pigs would gorge them before the truffle hunter can get to them. Now ..we use dogs. Terriers don’t care much for rutting male pigs. However, the aroma of a ripe white truffle will have any gourmand worth his/her salt swooning. I remember saving enough money to buy a nugget of Italian white truffle. Trifola Alba[1] for what was an obscene amount of money considering that I had to save to buy it. I had it with fluffy omelette and saved it in a bowl of risotto rice to stretch it. My plan was to have a nice creamy white truffle fettuccine and then the perfumed risotto would also be a treat. I intended to stretch that little nugget as far as I could and hoped I would have enough for a grilled sandwich too. I did my research and found that a bottle of sweet Hungarian Tokay[2] would suit my menu which included a foie pate and a potato galette with goose fat and garlic. But I didn’t have enough money. I was living in expensive central London W1 at this time and working in a restaurant and attending culinary school. So I walked everywhere, lived on mcD fries and strawberry milkshakes to save enough for the Tokaji. After about a week, I gather my supplies and come to my room that I rented only to find the door ajar. The landlady was standing outside and she was so mad. The cleaning woman had pulled out everything I ever owned and was under the bed. She had come to clean and she thought there was a dead rodent in the room. The raw milk Camembert that had been ripening in the window sill as part of the menu was the culprit. I calmed her down and threw the offending cheese out. I did have my dinner for one sans Camembert. And as a peace offering, I gave the bowl of perfumed risotto rice to my landlady with the remaining nub of truffle. We were friends again. But what is so magical about truffles? It lingers inside your nostrils long after you have had your fill. I did..for almost a week and I can beckon it on demand now when I am feeling particularly nostalgic. Is it a brain signal that gets triggered? Is it some kind of hard wired smell code that just have to be uncovered because it’s of the earth. It feels so ‘ancient’ and ‘prehistoric’ as though this old fungus is some silent hidden part of your DNA. I don’t feel that way about all other mushrooms tho’..maybe it’s because it’s rare and expensive. Entirely psychological. Or maybe it’s personal because I created a memory and story around it. I have no idea..but if you ever have had truffle..black or white..you’d know what I mean. How does a truffle smell.. [...] The smell of good truffles has been historically hard to describe, with comparisons ranging from mold to sweet body odor to sulphurous garlic. The fact is, it isn't really the fungus itself that is all that tasty, but rather the gas it gives off, part of which is produced by the fungi themselves and part of which is produced by bacteria and microbes living within. One major component is the molecule androstenone, described as having an aroma somewhere between sandalwood, vanilla and urine. Androstenone is also produced by randy male pigs, which is why female pigs make such good truffle hunters. Read More: https://www.mashed.com/59070/untold-truth-truffles/ https://www.mashed.com/59070/untold-truth-truffles/[..] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_truffle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_truffle [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369840 I remember this article because I commented there too and didn’t find it here.

solid_rugs 6y ago

Teen Spirit?

golemiprague 6y ago

You don't need to go to the past, there is smell variation between places in the world. Every place smells different, sometimes because of different types of food and BO, humidity, materials, nature around it, sewage system, temperature, heating/cooling systems and many other factors.

danans 6y ago

I visited a beautifully restored and maintained castle in Northern Germany not long ago. After the tour, as I was walking through the courtyard, I noticed out the corner of my eye what appeared to be a pile of horse manure. On closer inspection it was actually steel statue of a pile of horse manure, put there as a reminder of what would have covered the courtyard in its heyday.

blippage 6y ago

I visited ancient Pompeii about a decade ago. The roads were basically open sewers. Nice. There were stepping stones at regular intervals so that you could cross from one side of the pavement to the other. There stones were spaced so that the wheels of a horse-drawn cart could travel unimpeded.

dkobia 6y ago

In the old coastal town of Lamu, Kenya that is inundated by donkeys, you get a rough idea of what a town full of horses and fish smells like. The air is filled with an almost oppressive smell of poop and fish. It is unquestionably unpleasant. In some other towns, you are reminded of the smell of exhaust from old trucks belching pollution into the air. And lest you forget, you'll be reminded of a modern western construct - deodorant.

mncharity 6y ago

Picture Manhattan over several centuries. Odoriferous streets strewn with garbage, and excrement, and carcasses. Feeding masses of free-roaming pigs. Winters were colder then, so waste accumulated over the winter, frozen solid. Now imagine the weeks, after the spring thaw, until the pigs caught up with their sanitation backlog. Even for people of the time, it was thought remarkable.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

TwoBit 6y ago

What did the 1960s smell like? Nicotine.

userbinator 6y ago
That and the distinctive, also pleasant yet carcinogenic smell of chlorinated solvents.

unknown2374 6y ago

Off-topic: but why does nautil.us still on unsecured HTTP?

sharker8 6y ago

Disappointed! Thought we were going to talk about the new riddle of induction's grue and bleen only for smells. Like what if something smells like garbage before time t and delicious food after time t.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

The best old-time country smell is fresh hey in a barn. The worst modern country smell is the corporate pig farm.

S_A_P 6y ago

Go to a stable. Horses urinate and defecate at will. They dont normally shower or brush their teeth. There is a smell, but its not punch you in the face bad. Humans can smell really bad on all fronts, but noseblindness is a thing and probably for this reason. You really only smell exaggerated odor after a few minutes. When I was a student at Texas A&M I worked for the on campus car rental agency. The worst place on campus was the chicken refuse area, and it smelled bad- like mile away bad. Even there, you would stop smelling it after a few minutes only to catch a wiff or two a few hours later. Point being, it probably smelled awful, but not for long.

steveBK123 6y ago

I’d imagine the worst block of NYC during trash day in peak summer heat.. but much worse :-)