Odeuropa2025
There is a true smell museum created by Europeans – with the help of AI, a “odor library” brings chemistry to history.
In seventeenth and 17th centuries sermons, hell was described with sulfur and fire, but there were also more vivid descriptions that give us a more real idea, such as “one million dead dogs.”
“Hell and their symbolism perform a pCentral Apel in European and Christian culture“Says William Tullett, an expert in History of Smell and professor at the University of York, the United Kingdom.
To discover historical knowledge and “Nose testimonies” In about 43,000 images and 167,000 historical texts in six languages, researchers trained artificial intelligence models to identify references to smells and odors in documents
And this was just one of several smells recreated, with the help of the Odeuropa platform, with more than 2.4 million references or individual mentions to diverse smellsand presented at the World Expo in Japan this year.
Among other odors, AI helped scientists recreate smells as diverse as the incense and myrrh of the wise men, or the channels of Amsterdam in the past.
Although some Europeans found the smell of strangely attractive hell – the fumes remembered grilled meat -Japanese visitors in Osaka considered it “completely disgusting,” said historian Inger Leemans.
The team developed a Olfactory heritage toolboxcontaining a list of olfactory practices, aromas and “fragrant places.”
“This project was able to gather knowledge about odors from areas such as history, art history, chemistry and heritage science,” Leemans explained.
The team has already developed several olfactory experiences, such as a olfactory script self -joined by Amsterdamwith “scratch-and-sniff” maps (scrape and smell), and a Olfactory narrative kit – A practical guide to work with smells in museums and heritage sites.
