Olfaction has profoundly shaped human experience and behaviour from the deep past through to the present day. Advanced biomolecular and ‘omics’ sciences enable more direct insights into past scents, offering new options to explore critical aspects of ancient society and lifeways as well as the historical meanings of smell.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Max Planck Society for funding this research. B.H. is supported by the Joachim Herz Foundation and holds an Add-on Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Life Sciences. We thank F. Kai Yik Teoh for his feedback and valuable suggestions.
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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Joanna Day and Ruth Nugent for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Huber, B., Larsen, T., Spengler, R.N. et al. How to use modern science to reconstruct ancient scents. Nat Hum Behav 6, 611–614 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01325-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01325-7