What Did Ancient Humans Actually Smell Like?

What did ancient humans actually smell like before soap, shampoo and deodorant? Did cavemen stink? The real history of body odor is stranger than you think, and the smelliest people in history may not have lived in caves at all. Right now, you smell like a place that doesn't exist: Arctic Breeze, Ocean Rush, Mountain Spring. So we went back 50,000 years and followed the human nose through history. We start at Stone Age campfires and Neanderthal caves, then visit Egyptian perfume workshops, Roman baths and medieval bathhouses. We end with the Great Stink of London and the ad campaigns that taught the world to fear its own armpits. In this animated history video you'll find out: 👃 What a 5,700-year-old piece of chewing gum reveals about Stone Age people 🦠 Why fresh sweat doesn't smell, and the 60-million-year-old enzyme behind body odor 🧬 The gene that leaves some people with almost no body odor 🐕 Why the human nose is far better than you think (people can track a scent trail like a dog) 🌿 Hunter-gatherers who name smells as easily as we name colors 🏺 The first perfumes, Egyptian priests who washed four times a day, and the mystery of the head cones 🏛️ Roman baths, sweat sold as medicine, and an emperor who taxed urine 🛁 Why Europeans stopped bathing after the plague, and a future king's first bath at almost seven 💨 The Great Stink of 1858 and the sewers that saved London 🧴 How 1920s advertising turned body odor into "B.O." ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 The smell of right now 0:16 Rewind 50,000 years 0:40 Smell doesn't fossilize 0:49 A 5,700-year-old piece of gum 1:21 Neanderthals in the smoke 1:40 Body odor is older than humans 2:08 The low-odor gene 2:27 How good is the human nose? 3:01 Hunter-gatherers who name smells 3:47 The first perfumes 4:26 The mystery of the Egyptian head cones 4:52 Greek perfume and sweat medicine 5:22 Roman baths and the urine tax 6:01 Cloves in China, baths for Vikings 6:28 The twist: when humans started to stink 6:47 Plague, syphilis and the fear of water 7:45 The Great Stink 8:24 A Stone Age day, through the nose 9:21 How deodorant sold the fear 11:03 Your smell was information 🔔 Subscribe to Line By Line for more animated history about how ancient humans really lived: @LineByLineYoutube #history #ancienthumans #hygiene