Here is the entire quote:

When Cortés and his men landed on the sunny beaches of today's Veracruz, it was the first time the Aztecs encountered a completely unknown people. The Aztecs did not know how to react. They had trouble deciding what these strangers were. Unlike all known humans, the aliens had white skins. They also had lots of facial hair. Some had hair the color of the sun. They stank horribly. (Native hygiene was far better than Spanish hygiene.) When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honor. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers smell unbearable.

The native people of Veracruz weren't even known as Aztecs. That immediately jumps out to me. Aztecs lived hundreds of miles away and were rivals. If I'm not mistaken they were Totonacas.

I am not able to get a hold of the book online at the moment, and I'm not on campus to look myself. What source does he cite specifically when he states "native sources"?

This older thread deals with Aztec and Spanish hygiene. It's not so detailed, but between the different answers gives some good reading recommendations, and an impression of the high importance of hygiene to the Aztecs. E.g. with daily baths, and with Tenochtitlan having been built on a lake which facilitated cleanliness - so comparatively more important than hygiene would have been for the Spanish at the time.

I'd add to those posts that the Aztecs also used a variety of deodorants, including flowers and oils, whereas incense was used in different ritual contexts. While incense was given as one of many gifts to Cortés, native authors writing after the conquest period do not describe the Spanish as deities who would have been worthy of "divine honor" (as Miguel Flores Pastrana, Stephanie Wood and others have shown). Another version of this story sometimes mentioned, where Aztecs would use flowers instead of incense in order to not smell the Spaniards, seems a bit more likely to me because of this.

Unfortunately I'm traveling without source access so can't add to this atm - hopefully others can add to it since there's some more to unpack with Harari's quote re: incense, native sources and Aztec hygiene.

Edit: added a sentence for context

This seems more Harari's interpretation of events than anything else. For one, it is really only Diaz del Castillo who talks about this. Cortes mentions the use incense in temples and the presence of priests at major meetings, but is silent on whether or not those priests came bearing burning copal to those meetings. It is Diaz del Castillo who seems obligated to mention that every meet-and-greet between the Spanish and the various nobility of Mesoamerica was preceded by the wafting of censers. This isn't particularly significant though, as Cortes and Diaz del Castillo often end up focusing on different things in their respective texts.

The more significant aspect is that Diaz del Castillo seems to only mention the priests bearing incense at the start of meetings. I could absolutely be missing some passage where he mentions being constantly accompanied by priests bearing censers, but the fumigation seems to have been a greeting ritual. Here's just a few examples from shortly after the Spanish arrived on the coast:

when these people arrived and came before our Captain they first kissed the earth and then fumigated him and all the soldiers who were standing around him, with incense they brought in braziers of pottery. Cortes received them affectionately and seated them near himself... (p.124)

We were thus waiting when Tendile returned accompanied by many Indians, and after having paid their respects in the usual manner by fumigating Cortes and the rest of us with incense, he presented ten loads of fine rich feather cloth... (p. 127)

we reached the buildings, and the fat Cacique came out to receive us in the court... and he made deep obeisance to Cortes and fumigated him, as is their custom, and Cortes embraced him and we were lodged in fine and large apartments that held us all... (p. 142)

We went halfway through the town without meeting a single Indian to speak to, at which we were very much surprised, for they had fled in feat that very day when they had seen us climbing up to their houses. When we had reach the top of the fortress in the plaza near by where they had their cues and great idol houses, we saw fifteen Indians awaiting us all clad in good mantles, and each one with a brazier in his hand containing incense, and they came to where Cortes was standing and fumigated him and all the soldiers who were standing near and with deep obeisances they asked pardon for not coming out to meet us, and assured us that were welcome and asked us to rest. (p. 144)^1

So there's a multitude of episodes where the Spanish were greeted by incense-bearing priests, but nothing about being accompanied by those priests, particularly not a full-time retinue of perfumery. We also have instances of the ritual fumigation being done, as in the last quote, by people who were meeting the Spanish for the first time, and therefore could not have been aware of whatever level of body odor they had going on at that time. Finally, this is all occurring after the Spanish had been joined by both Geronimo de Aguilar, who had been living among a Maya group for several years at this point, and Malinalli/Malinche/Dona Marina, a Tabascan Nahua woman. Both of them would be aware if the fumigation was somehow usual or unique to meeting the Spanish.

To accept Harari's premise we would have to believe all of these groups somehow improvised a ritual, which was then somehow immediately standardized across various groups to such an extent that an outsider like Diaz del Castillo took it as a normal custom. In addition, we would have to accept that neither Aguilar nor Malinalli would have remarked upon this as strange, and this despite the typical view that the latter guided Cortes on matters of Mesoamerican politics and society.

The more plausible explanation is that the fumigation ritual was a pre-existing and widespread practice. Particularly given how incense-loving Mesoamerica was, this makes much more sense. We have copal as a major trade and tribute good, with the Codex Mendoza documenting the Tlachco region as being required to provide 400 baskets of refined incense and 8000 balls of unrefined copal every 80 days.^2 Smith notes that the long-handled "frying pan" incense burners are ubiquitous both in archaeological excavations and contemporary imagery, writing

This image is so common and standardized that in many cases it may have been an icon for magico-religious activity rather than a depiction of incense offerings in a specific setting... It is clear that the long-handled censer, used by professional priests, was an important component of Aztec public religion.^3

Finally, and ironically, in a meeting between indigenous priests and itinerant Spanish, the most odoriferous individuals might not have been who Harari presumes. While Mesoamericans in general, and Nahuas in specific, were noted for their assiduous attention to personal hygiene, the priesthood could be a notable exception. These were persons deliberately set apart from society, their persona cultivated to be otherworldly, a conduit of divine energy, living as much in the spiritual realm as in the physical. As such they often underwent long periods of fasting, abstaining from bathing, regularly engaging in autosacrifice, and famously never cutting or brushing their hair.

Diaz del Castillo remarks on the wild and shocking appearance of the priests, describing them thus:

The priests wore black cloaks like cassocks and long gowns reaching to their feet, and some had hoods like those worn by canons, and others had smaller hoods like those worn by Dominicans, and they wore their hair very long, down to the waist, with some even reaching down to the feet, covered with blood and so matted together that it could not be separated, and their ears were cut to pieces by way of sacrifice, and they stank like sulphur, and they had another bad smell like carrion... (p. 163)

These priests might go weeks without bathing as part of their penance and rituals, and spent their days covered in the blood of themselves and of sacrifices. Perhaps a more wholistic view of the smells of Mesoamerica at the time of Spanish arrival would argue against burning braziers of copal being improvised to guard against Spanish stench, and instead being long associated with counteracting the otherworldly odor of native priests.

^(1 All quotes from Maudslay's 1924 abridgment of his 1908 translation, *Bernal Diaz Del Castillo: The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517-1521)

^(2 Berdan and Anawalt 1997 The Essential Codex Mendoza, p. 76)

^(3 Smith ME, 2002 "Domestic Ritual at Aztec Provincial Sites in Morelos" in Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica, ed. Plunket)

PS - I also object to Harari stating that "it was the first time the Aztecs encountered a completely unknown people." Aside from the fact that the Aztecs were always encountering new cultures and people as they expanded from semi-nomads from the arid north to lords and masters of almost all of central Mesoamerica, Cortes' arrival was not even the first time Spanish had landed on the Gulf Coast. There had been two previous expeditions: Cordoba led a disastrous venture around the Yucatan, and Grijalva had pushed even further up the coast, encountering Aztec officials which first gave the Spanish word of the great state of Mexico. Cortes explicitly stated that he was following the route of Grijalva, and Diaz del Castillo was himself a veteran of that earlier expedition.

What kind of incense did the Aztecs use? Copal?

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