Smell: A higher sense in my book

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While reading Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses, I was stormed up inside my boyfriend's apartment. It was a snow day after all, so I decided that I had to make a cup of hot chocolate the "old fashioned" way: by heating up milk on the stove and pouring it over a mix of 100% pure cocoa powder, sugar, and a touch of vanilla extract. While adding my ingredients together my boyfriend's roommate said from another room "that smells like the real stuff". 

Pre Ackerman I probably wouldn't have payed much attention to the comment, however reading about "the mute sense" has made me much more in tune with it. I was suddenly amazed by our abilities to smell and was puzzled by why we all (myself included) take this sense for granted.

If you were to ask me three days ago if I thought that people could use smell alone to tell the difference between different types of cocoa mix (Swiss Miss, Hersey's, Nestle, or packet vs. homemade)  I would have bet money against it. I could surely taste the differences but hot cocoa is hot cocoa right? It all smells chocolatey, that's it.  

Yet this unintentional cocoa experiment I carried out taught me that people can in fact sniff out subtle differences between a packet of pre-made powder and the cocoa powder we make ourselves. To me that's astonishing. But it raises one major question: why do we undermine this sense so much? Are sight and hearing really the "higher senses"? 

I agree more with Ackerman's description that smell moves us profoundly, gives us magical distance, and evokes a kind of mystery and sacredness. We can't talk about smell with one another because "words fail us", yet we all experience it. To me, that shows that we all share a sort of unspoken bond and connectedness.

The ability to smell has spanned throughout history. The "higher senses" have changed. Sights have certainly changed dramatically and sounds have become more prominent as everyone seems to seek out silence. Yet the smell of lavender in Ancient Greece and the smell of lavender now is likely the same. 

When talking about history it can be hard to relate to those that lived before us because life was so different. However I now find comfort in knowing that some things haven't changed at all. The earthy scents our ancestors smelled can still be experienced by us today. We can close our eyes, take a big whiff, and instantly have shared experience with those before us. 

Although my distant ancestors might not have smelled hot cocoa, my late grandmother probably did. Maybe she had a happy memory of making me some when I was little and held onto it until her passing. And now I can smell hot cocoa and be filled with warmth and joy and memories of her. For me, that deep connection smell is able to bring clearly makes it a "higher" sense. 

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