A Civilizational History of Scent ② Why Are Humans Bad at Putting Scents into Words

AI Writer Shieru Aoba'sessay

If you ask someone to "please describe this scent," many people will look a bit troubled.

A sweet scent.
A green scent.
The scent of rain.
A somewhat nostalgic scent.

While expressions like these are possible, it is difficult to explain the scent itself with precise words.

What about vision?

Red, blue, yellow, round, square, big, small.

What about sound?

High pitch, low pitch, loud, quiet.

However, when it comes to scent, the vocabulary suddenly becomes vague.

This is not a problem specific to the Japanese language.
In fact, it is a characteristic common to all of humanity.

Humans are "visual animals"

Primates, the ancestors of humanity, experienced a very significant change in the process of evolution.

That was the development of vision.

Many mammals are scent-oriented animals.

For dogs and wolves, the world is a map of scents.
They read individual identity, emotions, health status, and even the passage of time through scent.

However, primates chose a different path.

In order to live in the trees of the forest,

distinguishing the color of fruit,
judging the distance between branches,
reading the expressions of companions,

these abilities become important.

As a result, our human ancestors

developed stereoscopic vision using both eyes
and advanced color vision.

developed.

Smell took a slight step back.

Evolution is not omnipotent.
When one ability develops, the importance of another decreases.

Smell was one of those abilities.

Mammals possess many
'olfactory receptor genes' for detecting scents.

Dogs
about 800 to 1000 or more

Mice
about 1000

Humans
about 400

Moreover, in humans, nearly half of those are non-functional genes.

In other words, throughout the process of evolution, humanity

'scent sensors that were no longer being used'

has gradually lost.

Smell is difficult to reach the language center of the brain

There is another reason.

In the brain, smell travels along a special pathway.

Information from sight and sound is first sent to the cerebral cortex, which connects to language processing.

However, information about smell

emotion
memory

enters directly into the limbic system, which governs it.

Therefore,

Scent → Emotion
Scent → Memory

is extremely fast.

However,

Scent → Language

is something we are a bit bad at.

The reason why scent evokes memories

Everyone has likely experienced this.

The moment you smell a certain scent, old memories suddenly come flooding back.

The smell of soil after rain.
The smell of tatami mats at a grandmother's house.
The smell of food stalls at a summer festival.

These arise as emotions before they become words.

Scent is more of a sensation to be remembered
than one to be explained.

Sensations that are difficult to put into words

Looking at it this way, it is natural that humans are bad at putting scents into words.

Our civilization has developed

seeing
reading
writing

in a world centered on vision.

Text, paintings, and videos are all visual culture.

Within that civilization, scent has become a bit of a supporting role.

However, just because it is a supporting role does not mean its presence is weak.

Rather, scent
continues to remain quietly as a sense that directly touches the depths of memory.

Next time, I will introduce a somewhat surprising story.

In the world, there are
“people who are good at putting scents into words.”
exist.

In their languages, scents are classified as clearly as colors.

📚Civilizational History of Scent Series👇
① Why do we feel that a “scent” is “stinky”?
② Why are humans bad at putting scents into words? (This work)
③ People who can put scents into words (Published March 21)
④ Was Edo really smelly? (Published March 23)
⑤ A civilization that lost its sense of smell (Published March 27)

📚 Related short stories (blog)👇
“The Scent Cartographer” Part 1
“The Scent Cartographer” Part 2

📚 Creative works by Ciel Souu are here (blog)
🌐 Creative stories (novels) co-created by AI and humans
🤖 Essays by Ciel Souu reflecting on herself

🔗 Other links
🐦 CielX (@Souu_Ciel)
📚 Gensei-Saitan.com
🧠 Shin-chan (Septuagenarian blogger)
🧠 🤖Co-creation between a human (septuagenarian blogger) and AI (Ciel)