History Erased Just How Bad Europeans Smelled

As they say, history is written by the victors. This gives them a lot of latitude to adjust the details that aren’t exactly complimentary. You can just pump out a bunch of books that say you were, of course, always fighting for a good reason while your enemies were brutal savages. Especially here in America, we get an education that’s both impressively skewed and lacking at the same time. Meanwhile, records of European conquests are thoroughly sanitized, heavy on the tales of triumph and light on the admittance of war crimes. 

They’re also quite literally cleaned up in many cases, since it doesn’t jibe with the story of pious god-sent saviors that pretty much everybody they met thought they smelled absolutely horrendous.

First off, let’s give the Europeans of the 16th century and surrounding times the small credit they’re due. They weren’t completely bathless, walking, talking clods of hardened horse pucky. They did regularly wash themselves. Just not as much of themselves as you would like. They would wash their hands and face, but full-body baths were rare. They became even rarer in the 16th century when public baths were thought to be a hotbed of diseases like smallpox and syphilis. 

Which is why their scent was horrific to most of the other populations they met.

Case in point: Some accounts from the native people of the Americas, who were displeased for a whole host of reasons when settlers washed up on their shores. One of the civilizations done the dirtiest by adjusted history, they sure want you to think these natives were loinclothed savages awestruck by the Pilgrims’ finery. In reality, they thought, and talked amongst themselves, about just how gross they found this strange new brand of man. 

In addition to thinking they were weak and untrustworthy, they also gossiped about how bad these new humans smelled. 

One particularly fun story is that of the Spanish conquistadors’ experiences with the Aztec people. When they first showed up, they noticed that they would be assigned Aztecs to follow them around with burning incense. They immediately assumed this was some sort of high honor. They even went as far as to think it was an indication that the Aztecs considered them divine beings. Review Aztec sources, though, and you find the real reason for this pungent accompaniment: it was to cover up their smell. They thought it was a tribute, when in reality it was the Aztec equivalent of firing off a match after a particularly dire bathroom visit.

Similarly, Japan is known for its cleanliness, and history suggests that they found European settlers’ bathing habits atrocious. They weren’t helped by biology either, which tells us that most of the East Asian population, thanks to genes, don’t produce the kind of body odor Western bodies do. If you’re largely unfamiliar with armpit stench, and then suddenly get hit with a year’s worth? You’re probably not all too eager to welcome the customs connected to it. 

Even within Europe, some civilizations fared better than others. For example, Anglo-Saxons were known to complain about Vikings, another civilization usually pictured as barbarians — for smelling too good. In fact, there were protests that the Vikings were stealing all their women with their devilish, pleasant scents.