Salt

Human beings need salt to survive.  As hunter-gatherers, people naturally consumed enough salt in their diets by eating the flesh of animals they hunted.  But the change to agriculture and a plant-dominated diet meant that salt often needed to be added. Over millennia, salt production technology advanced from simple salt gathering around natural brine springs, shorelines and desert lakes to heating brine to create salt crystals, and eventually to salt mining and large-scale, industrial production.  In this lecture, evidence for some of the earliest salt production in the world and the leading role this mineral played in human history will be presented.  It is claimed that salt has 14,000 uses.

Reading

Science Daily 2010. Oldest Salt Mine Known to Date Located in Azerbaijan (Nov 27, 2010) – http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2010/11/101125201448.htm

Weller, O. and Dumitroaia, G. 2005. The earliest salt production in the world: an early Neolithic exploitation in Poiana Slatinei-Lunca, Romania, Antiquity 79: 306 and http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/weller/

Kurlansky, M. 2003. Salt; A World History. London, Vintage Books