Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant scent . The odoriferous compounds that make up a perfume can be manufactured synthetically or extracted from plant or animal sources. Perfumes have been known to exist in some of the earliest human civilisations either through ancient texts or from archaeological digs. Modern perfumery began in the late 1800s with the commercial synthesis of aroma compounds such as vanillin or coumarin, which allowed for the composition of perfumes with smells previously unattainable solely from natural aromatics alone. The word perfume used today derives from the Latin "per fumus", meaning through smoke. Perfumery, or the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and was further refined by the Romans and Persians. Although perfume and perfumery also existed in India, much of its fragrances are incense based. The...