It has been claimed that odour is relatively less codable in languages than vision, audition or other sensory modalities. On this basis, researchers have attempted to draw conclusions about how representational systems in the mind/brain are organised. Aslian-speaking communities (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula) are a counter-example to this claim. This talk provides evidence that Aslian communities are “smell cultures” with an elaborated set of smell distinctions in their lexica. Comparison of smell vocabularies across the diverse Aslian cultures suggests these distinctions do not have any relation to particular cultural practices but are linguistically motivated and remarkably stable across space, time and ecologies.