Humans have always tended to build communities either around source of salt, or where they can trade for it. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142001619/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp;=1789&creative;=9325&creativeASIN;=0142001619&linkCode;=as2&tag;=tra0c7-20&linkId;=256b179f556a11106e46ce260d443a53 All through history the availability of salt has been pivotal to civilization. The word "salary" comes from the Latin word for salt because the Roman Legions were sometimes paid in salt, which was quite literally worth its weight in gold. In Britain, the suffix "-wich" in a placename means it was once a source of salt, as in Sandwich and Norwich. The Natron Valley was a key region that supported the Egyptian Empire to its north, because it supplied it with a kind of salt that came to be called by its name, natron. Even before this, what is now thought to have been the first city in Europe is Solnitsata, in Bulgaria, which was a salt mine, providing the area now known as the Balkans with salt since 5400 BC.[3] Even the name Solnisata means "salt works". While people have used canning and artificial refrigeration to preserve food for the last hundred years or so, salt has been the best-known food preservative, especially for meat, for many thousands of years.[4] A very ancient salt-works operation has been discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamț County, Romania. Evidence indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage to extract the salt as far back as 6050 BC.[5] The salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began.[6] The harvest of salt from the surface of Xiechi Lake near Yuncheng in Shanxi, China, dates back to at least 6000 BC, making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks.[7] There is more salt in animal tissues such as meat, blood and milk, than there is in plant tissues.[8] Nomads who subsist on their flocks and herds do not eat salt with their food, but agriculturalists, feeding mainly on cereals and vegetable matter, need to supplement their diet with salt.[9] With the spread of civilization, salt became one of the world's main trading commodities. It was of high value to the ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and other peoples of antiquity. In the Middle East, salt was used to ceremonially seal an agreement, and the ancient Hebrews made a "covenant of salt" with God and sprinkled salt on their offerings to show their trust in Him.[10] An ancient practice in time of war was salting the earth: scattering salt around in a defeated city in order to prevent plant growth. Abimelech was ordered by God to do this at Shechem,[11] and various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus ploughed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after it was defeated in the Third Punic War (146 BC). Salt may have been used for barter in connection with the obsidian trade in Anatolia in the Neolithic Era.[13] Herodotus described salt trading routes across Libya back in the 5th century BC. In the early years of the Roman Empire, roads such as the Via Salaria were built for the transportation of salt from the salt pans of Ostia to the capital.[14] Salt was included among funeral offerings found in ancient Egyptian tombs from the third millennium BC, as were salted birds, and salt fish.[15] From about 2800 BC, the Egyptians began exporting salt fish to the Phoenicians in return for Lebanon cedar, glass and the dye Tyrian purple; the Phoenicians traded Egyptian salt fish and salt from North Africa throughout their Mediterranean trade empire.[16] In Africa, salt was used as currency south of the Sahara, and slabs of rock salt were used as coins in Abyssinia.[9] Moorish merchants in the 6th century traded salt for gold, weight for weight. The Tuareg have traditionally maintained routes across the Sahara especially for the transportation of salt by Azalai (salt caravans). The caravans still cross the desert from southern Niger to Bilma, although much of the trade now takes place by truck. Each camel takes two bales of fodder and two of trade goods northwards and returns laden with salt pillars and dates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt

• published: 08 Oct 2015
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