While it is true that our primitive instincts for caveman survival needed a sharp sense of smell more than our common day couch warriors; research seems to indicate that mid-century religious institutions and a much stricter interpretation of accepted behavioural norms literally forced people out of their sense of smell.

Because a sense of sight or hearing implies distance from the sensory object of measurement, whereas to smell something is to inhale it, to take it deep inside oneself, it was considered 'beastlike' and something needing to be controlled.

Thus we have this forced distancing of the human from a creative, personal usage of their faculty of smell.