From Ben Haller, Ithaca, New York, US
Andy Coghlan says that hunter-gatherers are better at naming smells, based on them giving the same name for a given smell more consistently than horticulturalists (27 January, p 12). But the study scored a society's smell-naming performance as “0 if everyone in a group gave a different name, and 1 if all responses matched”.
Imagine a culture that has only two colour words: “warm” and “cool”. Its people will agree on the classification of almost all colours. Now imagine a culture that revels in colour words, like “vermilion”, “puce” and “chartreuse”. Which culture cares more about colour, and is better at perceiving and naming it? The same issue would seem to apply to smells.
The editor writes:
• The researchers say the hunter-gatherers had at least as many words as the horticulturalists, but they were much more consistent in their choice of word.
Advertisement
