One consequence of the loss of olfaction as an important medium of communication was an alteration in the relationship between humans. It may have endowed man with greater capacity to withstand crowding. If humans had noses like rats, they would be forever tied to the full array of emotional shifts occurring in persons around them. Other people’s anger would be something we could smell. The identity of anyone visiting a home and the emotional connotations of everything that took place in the home would be matters of public record so long as the smell persisted. The psychotic would begin to drive all of us mad, and the anxious would make us even more anxious. To say the least, life would be much more involved and intense. It would be less under conscious control, because the olfactory centers of the brain are older and more primitive than the visual centers.
— Edward T. Hall. The Hidden Dimension: An anthropologist examines man’s use of space in public and in private. 1969.
