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people find it easy to name colors, but when it comes to smells, it's hard to find the right words. One exception is the Jahai people, a hunter-gatherer on the Malay Peninsula.
previous studies have shown that smells are as simple as color for them. A new study
the Journal of The New York Times suggests that the Jiahai people's special sense of smell is related to their hunting and gathering lifestyles.
people agree that smell is a feeling of silence that cannot be described in words. Decades of research on English-speaking participants seem to confirm this. Asifa Majid of Ladbrokes University in the Netherlands says, "But the Jahai people are better at naming smells than their English-speaking peers." Of course, it also raises the question of where this difference comes from.
To find out what's behind it, the Majid team and Nicole Kruspe of Lund University in Sweden, two groups of people who live in the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula, the Semakbergs, who make a living from hunter-gatherers, and the Semeles, who make a living from the horticultural farming trade. They live in similar environments, speak similar languages, and are associated. Does they make a difference in how they express smells?
researchers recruited 20 Semakbergs and 21 Semelians to observe their ability to express colors and smells. The scientists chose oranges, leather, cinnamon, mint, bananas, lemons, licorice, turquoia, garlic, coffee, apples, cloves, pineapples, roses, fennel and fish for a total of 16 odors. In terms of color, the scientists selected 80 Menzel colors and presented 20 isometrome tones in four different brightnesses. The subjects simply answered: What's the taste? Or what color is this?
results are clear, hunter-gatherer Semakberg, like the Jahai, can easily express smells and colors in these tests. Non-hunter-gatherer Semel, on the other hand, behaves like English-speaking people, and the smell makes them hard to describe.
researchers say the results suggest that the decrease in the importance of odor relative to other sensory inputs is the latest result of cultural adaptation. This challenges the idea that differences in neural architecture are the basis for olfactory differences, suggesting that cultural differences may play a greater role. (Source: Science Network Tang 1 Dust)
