We asked an archaeologist if the smell is “deadly” at all.
Synesthesia is the sensory crossover that allows sure people to mentally " smell color " or " taste row " or decide that Thursday is brown .
It just so follows that to a veritable synaesthetic mind the month of October is likely characterized by a strong scent of pumpkin spice . Not mine , though . To my brainpower , October is dead leaf and stale books , the reasoning being that ifthe presence ofdead things mostly defines it , that ’s probably the scent it emanates .
But not everything is what it seems . Takecatacombs , for example . The ancient underground burial sites replete to the lip with human bones must reek with a nozzle - curling stench of decease . Or do they ?
Design by Maitane Romagosa for Thrillist
in person , I have n’t visited any of the man ’s most famous catacombs yet . So I asked someone who would know — an archaeologist — to tell me what I should bear to smell upon deign into one of these old and ominous ossuaries .
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We did the research, so you don’t have to.
What do catacombs smell like?
Horror travelenthusiasts give all sorts of answers . Some TripAdvisor commentator of the Paris Catacombs compare their odour to a swarthy old library , while other traveler who chaffer other catacomb remark a faint olfactory property of incense . None of them claimed what I look — that they stink to heaven .
When I inquire Dr. Rachel Kalisher , who harbour a PhD in archaeology from Brown University and is a inspect clinical assistant professor of anthropology at New York University , if this was exact , she check .
" The idea that there ’s the smell of death is in the main connected to decomposing bodies or moulder pulp or putrefaction or any of the kinds of smells that are associated with the liquidation of soft tissue paper , " Kalisher explain . " And we do n’t have that in this case . "
Throughout the age , catacombs have been both a primary burying situation and a lowly one . In a primary inhumation site , corpses are both buried and left to rot . A petty burial web site , alternatively , carries only the bones of the bodies that were left to fully break up in another location beforehand . Some of the most iconic catacombs in the world , like the Paris ones , are usually secondary interment sites , meaning they could never smell like rotting flesh .
" That ’s not only because so much time has passed , " Kalisher say . " But because what you ’re dealing with is a caboodle of citizenry who already disintegrate in a grave somewhere and then were exhumed . There ’s really no adhering soft tissue whatsoever . There ’s no traces of it . "
bone themselves , while tough to break down and resistant in nature ( they bear many minerals ) , do n’t really smell . Since no tissue is tie to them , they are no dissimilar from , say , a rawhide chew toy .
As a whole , catacomb likely smell like your basement . " All we ’re really smell out when you go into one of these really enclose spaces is what you would smell in any other moist or slimly humid , dark space where there ’s perhaps not a lot of melodic phrase circulation , " Kalisher explain .
Now that we ’ve remove the air about their smell , you may loosen about the next interrogation you might be wondering . Is it good to breathe the air of catacombs , turn over they ’re full of human cadaver ?
The answer is yes ; you have nothing to occupy about . As long as you do n’t prove and chew down on a ivory , you should be safe from any pathogens .
" There ’s no dynamic injury in breathing the air travel , " Kalisher enunciate . " Pathogens are n’t living that long because there is biologically no elbow room for them to hold up . They take hosts in Holy Order to live , so if the soundbox ’s deadened , they are not extend to survive . "
As it turn out , the air in the catacombs might not be a luck . But Kalisher will severalise you that the mankind visiting the site really might be . " The modern dwell mass that are walk around the catacombs are the more active federal agent of decomposition and taphonomy now for the ivory than the bones themselves ! " Kalisher excuse .
