Among the aromas of the past the worst is certainly thesmell of helldescribed as that of “A million dead dogs”. But there are many, many others, all collected in Odeuropa great database that contains almost 2 and a half million of different odors mentioned in almost 180 thousand historical documents relating to the last five hundred years of European history. As you can imagine, it is an extremely complex project, which combines multidisciplinary skills and artificial intelligence tools to document, reconstruct and preserve the historical aromas of the old continent. Including, precisely, that of hell, reconstructed by the British researcher William foolexpert in the history of the smell to the University of Yorkin the United Kingdom, which developed the Outline Olezzo by collecting hundreds of references in the seamations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, obtaining a nauseating mixture which, evidently, had to be afraid of the hell itself.
A cultural question
Among the many smells of the past, freely available in Odeuropa Smell Explorerthe managers of the project selected a dozen (including, of course, that of hell) who presented to the European Pavilion of the Universal Exposition of Osaka 2025: to be mentioned, for example, the aromas of incense, myrrh and gods Amsterdam channelseach with their own emotional, cultural and historical connotations. The exhibition, according to Inger Leemanshistorical of the FUEMPLY of Amsterdam and coordinator of the project, was “The vivid demonstration of how subjective smells are and dependent on the historical context”: some Europeans have even found the smell of hell “attractive”, because it reminded them of the scent of grilled meat, while most Asian visitors described it as “Completely disgusting”. “This project – explained Leemans – He managed to bring together skills on smells from different areas: history, art history, chemistry, science of cultural heritage “. Odeurope’s goal is to help researchers and decision makers recognize and safeguard smells and “Olfactory landscapes” particularly significant, which characterize a particular place, environment or historical moment and therefore are part of the intangible heritage of our continent. “The sense of smell – said Tillett – It can be a powerful tool to help people get in touch with history, and can be used by museums and cultural sites to make exhibitions more engaging and memorable “.
The help of artificial intelligence
To extract the “Olfactory testimonies” From about 43 thousand images and 167 thousand historical texts in six different languages, the researchers trained artificial intelligence models capable of scrolling all documents and identifying references to aromas. Based on the algorithm output, they therefore created so -called knowledge grapha sort of structured network of interconnected information that connects and contextualizes the data and allows you to navigate them. The idea came from the East: in 2001, in fact, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment had drawn up a list of the hundred most significant olfactory landscapes in the country, including the Navy fog which envelops the Kushiro region, the white peaches of the hills of Kibi and the Korean cuisine in the Tsuruhashi district in Osaka. Comparing themselves with the Japanese colleagues, European researchers decided to try to export the idea to our continent, to recover “The delicacy and sensitivity to the smells that we have lost today”.
A forgotten sense
According to Leemans, thanks to projects like these The sense of smell could in fact return to fashion: “Most people – he explained – It has olfactory knowledge to which it normally does not draw on. If we help them, they could recover them and use this knowledge “. If we really have to choose, Better navy fog and white peaches than sulfur and mortar dogsi.