
What Does History Smell Like? - toufiqbarhamov
https://daily.jstor.org/what-does-history-smell-like/
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caymanjim
I've been to rural areas in North Africa, India, Southeast Asia, the
Caribbean, and Central America. One uniquitous and unexpected smell is that of
smoke. The majority of cooking in these rural areas is over fire, and burning
garbage is a commonplace activity; people will burn their household garbage in
their back yards. That and the smell of food cooking (usually outdoors) are
the most prevalent scents. In low- or moderate-population areas, it's actually
a pleasant smell, and the lack of other pollution leaves the air fresh, with
smoke wafting by occasionally. Notably, there's no sewage smell in most of
these places, even when there's no plumbing.

Cities in these places, on the other hand, can have overwhelming scents. In
addition to all the smoke from the same activities above, some of the large
cities (particularly in Asia) have open sewers in the street, and standing
bodies of water with algae overgrowth. I imagine this is roughly what large
cities over the millenia have smelled like.

Now there are two major pollutants in the mix as well: cars (with no pollution
standards in place) and industrial manufacturing. Of the places I've been,
this is most prevalent in large cities in India and Thailand.

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tlb
> medical texts maintained that odors could directly affect those who inhaled
> them

That didn't just cause people to be fussy about smells. It caused them, for
hundreds of years, to ignore evidence for the actual mechanism of disease
transmission. The well-known story about the Broad St cholera outbreak, where
someone figured out (in 1854) that cholera was caused by tainted drinking
water, didn't have a happy ending as the "miasma" (odors) theory prevailed
with public health officials and millions more died.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak)

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tenpies
Also quite tellingly, many of the early medical textbooks had areas devoted to
cosmetics, perfume, incense, and scented aromatics. The 10th century Al-
Tasrif, one of the most important medical textbooks ever written and in use
until the 1700s, had an entire chapter devoted to this topic.

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DanielBMarkham
There's an interesting discussion about the variety of smells which the
article goes into, but there were also recurring smells across multiple
epochs.

I've spent some time thinking about historical smells. My money says a huge
hunk of history smelled like the back end of a horse.

~~~
gumby
Only in urban environments.

Farms probably didn’t smell as strongly of animal piss as they do now due to
less confinement and smaller numbers of animals.

India has probably smelled like burning cow dung for millennia. It’s a very
characteristic and welcoming smell (though probably horrible if you actually
live in a dwelling where this technology is used)

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jwdunne
Burning cow shit smells welcoming? I'd have thought it'd stink like cow shit
and smoke. What does it smell like? Genuinely curious!

~~~
gumby
Mostly like straw. Took me decades before I figured out what that smell was as
I don't actually know anyone who has to do it.

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wizardforhire
I remember reading somewhere twenty years ago that the past smelled aweful.
People not bathing, poor sanitation, sewage, industrial pollution, fires for
cooking or heat, I wish I had even a hint of where to find that article
because it was pretty vivid. The closest I think I’ve ever come to that level
of supposed stench would be New York City in the summer time when it’s 90-+100
degrees and +70% humidity. You can’t walk a block with out being soaked in
sweat and everyone is soaked in sweat! Combined with the raw garbage, ands
feces and it makes for a great democratizer and some interesting scenes.

~~~
eesmith
The linked-to article says:

"But Jenner writes that this kind of stink was by no means ubiquitous in
premodern times. It was in moments of high poverty and rapid urbanization that
the most awful odors arose—“moments and cultures better understood as
experiencing or entering modernity than as immured in some ‘primitive’
state.”"

