Exploring the traces of fragrance, using instruments to revisit the long history

 

In fact, the vast majority of scents contain important information, especially scents.
It can be said that simple scents contain biological mysteries, and even traces of history can be learned from them
.
Even, in a recent scientific study, researchers have begun to encourage archaeologists to actively explore this scent that can help us explore history
.

 

In the recent "Nature Human Behaviour" journal, Huber published a paper on the reproduction of historical scents, opening up a whole new field of science - exploring the history of cultural relics through the smell of cultural relics, and also proposed a new scientific field Direction - Reproduce the smell of cultural relics
.

 

But in fact, it is not easy to reproduce the smell of cultural relics
.
The aromas in cultural relics and relics mainly come from the triterpenoids and lipids on the objects, and the sequestered odors tend to disappear as soon as they are revealed
.
However, the vast majority of people have limited ability to distinguish smells, and it is difficult to describe the "characteristics" of smells in words.
This also leads to the lack of a general reference standard in the process of restoring the smell of this gas
.
To solve this problem, it is necessary to collect and establish an odor file, and to capture "gas molecules" at the moment when the cultural relic emits odor
.

 

　　So how are these jobs done? Scientific instruments may provide the answer
.
As mentioned above, different substances emit different odors.
In other words, odors are not generated out of thin air.
Almost every odor can correspond to one or several chemical substances, and the propagation process of odor itself is actually the process of chemical molecules in the air.
process of diffusion
.
Although current scientific instruments cannot directly quantify odors like the human sense of smell, they can qualitatively and quantitatively analyze chemical components
.
That is to say, by collecting the chemical substances on the cultural relics and artificially recombining and reducing them according to the ingredients, the smell can be artificially reproduced
.
And relatively, the chemical substances emitted by the substance itself are closely related to its environment and storage time.
Therefore, if the gas composition of the object can be determined, the historical story behind it can also be deduced relatively
.

 

　　However, the idea of ​​exploring history from gas is still in its infancy, and the continuous evolution of organisms in history has also given various possibilities to aroma.
Therefore, there are still many unknowns in this research, but this does not Affects its fun and the possibility to surprise us
.
In fact, even the research on fragrance itself is enough to bring many possibilities to our lives
.

 

　　Original title: Exploring the traces of fragrance and using instruments to revisit the long history