Don't wonder why I blog about salt here guys. It's just that one day it made me realize how important salt in our everyday life. So I continue my unfinished research before and put together all my gathered information. It's time to share this.
Salt has always been one of man's most prized mineral resources, mainly because of its preservative and seasoning properties. But it is also essential. All plants and creatures, including, of course, human beings, need salt to stay alive.
Some of our natural body salts are lost when we perspire, urinate or cry, and these have to be replaced. Raw meat is the best provider, cooked meat less so as most of the salt is lost in the cooking process.
A diet based on grain and vegetables has little salt, so mineral salt is usually used to remedy this deficiency. Salt aids digestion and forms part of a healthy and balances diet today, as it has done throughout history.
Hold on because this is some kind a long post.
Thousands of years ago, bars of salt were carried from the coast of Africa to inland cities of the Middle East, and Arab merchants would exchange precious goods such as jewels and silks for them. In some societies , salt was literally worth its weight in gold. Indeed, it was known as "white gold", as, ounce for ounce, the worth of both commodities was the same. As Cassiodorus, a fifth-century Goth administrator, said: 'It may well be that some seek not gold, but there lives not a man who does not need salt.'
Areas that produced salt, either as rock salt that was cut in mines or quarries or by evaporation of sea water, were fought over because of salt's commercial and strategic importance. Two thousand years ago, when the Romans were carving out an empire on campaigns in North Africa, Gaul and Britain, soldiers' wages were paid partly in salt. This 'salt money', or salarium, is the direct derivation of the word 'salary;.
In the Middle Ages, white gold was traded all over Europe, and controlling taxing this movement was one way to raise revenue. The monks who had settled at the crossing point of the River Isar in Central Europe began to charge carters for the privilege of transporting salt across the river, using the bridge they had built. From this tax, wealth was accumulated and, in time, the 'place of the monks', or Munich, grew into the city of 1.3 million we see today.
Salt has been used to preserve food from earliest times. The ancient Egyptians (who used salt to embalm the bodies of the dead) also used it to preserve game birds which were then stored in earthenware urns. This method was dry salting. Fish was also preserved in this way and the Egyptians had a thriving export business throughout the Mediterranean of dried and salted fish.
Christianity greatly helped the salting business. Lent, the 40-day fast that preceded Easter, was the most profitable time for salt merchants. Fish was essential during Lent and fresh fish was scarce away from the sea. At other times throughout the year, namely on Fridays, Christians were expected to eat fish. Until the 16Th century, it was a capital offense in England to eat meat on Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.
Another method of preserving food was dissolving salt. By the Middle Ages, meat and fish could be preserved over the long winter months by immersion in a strong solution of salt and water. This was known as brine curing which some also were doing at present. In the 14Th and 15Th centuries great shoals of herring swarmed in the North Sea and the Baltic. The merchant towns of the Hanseatic League dominated much of the Baltic commence is salt and fish for almost 200 years.
As for the North Sea, Yarmouth and Scarborough on England's east coast and Brielle in Holland were the main centres whre herring were salted and barrelled.
Herring is a fatty fish whose oils soon turn rancid. When fish are going to be salted, the process has to be started within 24 hours of the catch, so this required a high degree of organisation in the era of sail.
Because of salt's economic importance over the centuries, governments have taxed it and controlled its use by holding a monopoly over its supply and distribution. This has had profound historical consequences.
During the late Tang Dynasty (755 to 907) in China, the revenue raised by the monopoly on salt was not only the main source of funds for the central government but also helped to maintain the country's transportation system centered on the Yangtze River.
In 17Th-century Russia, Czar Alexis' chief minister was Boris Morozov. he implemented a number of measures to improve the position of the gentry and the townspeople, as well as to stabilize state finances by introducing a monopoly on tobacco and salt. In the letter case, this resulted in quadrupling the duty exacted. The salt monopoly proved so unpopular riots broke out and some officials were lynched. Sensibly, the Czar realized his people were miffed, to say the least, and the law was abrogated.
The French monarchy's heavy tax on salt, called the
gabelle, was one of the reasons why the people decided to rise up and do away with Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette and create the Republic.
During the 20th century, when Britain ruled India, Mahatma Gandhi urged the people to reject a tax on salt. In 1930, he led a 320-km march to the sea to collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. The pacifist leader was arrested and imprisoned, but his action was a stepping stone to independence, another nail in the coffin of the Raj.
But what exactly is this mineral substance that has played such an important role in history? Salt is sodium chloride (chemical symbol NaCl). It occurs naturally in sea water, natural brine's and in a crystal form, called halite by mineralogists, as rock salt.
Sea water contains, on average, about 3 to 5 percent salt (sea birds have salt glands, like modified tear ducts on their beaks, to remove salt which enables them to drink sea water with no ill effect). Seas like the Mediterranean and the Red Sea contain a higher proportion of salt.
It has been estimated if the world's ocean dried up, there would be enough salt to cover the entire United States to a depth of more than 1.5 km.Evaporation of sea water, either by solar or artificial heat, has been a common way to manufacture salt since earliest times. Legend has it a Roman soldier discovered how to make salt from the sea water. Cassius Petox was commander of a legion station in Maldon, Essex part of the Roman occupation of Britain about 2,000 years ago. He suffered severely from aching bones' brought about by damp cold weather, but he found his pain was eased by taking a hot sea water bath after a hard day subjugating the woad-wearers.
During the preparation of one of these baths, the water was kept boiling too long and Cassius was far from gruntled bu being made to wait. However, he noticed that there were small white crystals in the bottom of the bath, which turned out to be flakes of salt.
Natural brine is water containing high percentage of salt. The most famous brine is the Dead Sea, which covers an area of 1,050 square km and contains approximately 12 billion tonnes of salt. The Jordan River, which contains only 35 parts of salt per 100,000 parts of water, adds 850,000 tonnes of salt to this total each year. Atmospheric conditions mean that for about eight months each year, salt is recovered from Dead Sea by means of sunlight (solar evaporation).
Rock salt occurs widely in the form of rock masses from all geological periods. All these major rock salt deposits originated from evaporation of sea water in the geological past (78 percent of the mineral matter in sea water is sodium chloride).
Another economically important type of rock salt deposit is salt domes, which were formed when earth pressure forced up plugs of rock salt. They can measure up to 1.5 km across. This salt may have originated from depths as great as 15,000 metres.
Rock salt may be obtained from domes, by conventional mining methods or by drilling wells into the salt strata and pumping water down to dissolve the salt.
The brine is then returned to the surface and evaporated to release the sodium chloride.
Salt has a range of contradictory properties - for example, it may be used to freeze ice cream in the summer yet melt snow in winter. Modern civilisation relies on a plentiful and inexpensive supply of salt to the tune of 170 million tonnes annually. It form the basis of the world's heavy chemical manufacturing industries as well as myriad other uses.
Just remember, as you refill the water softener in your dishwasher or reach for the salt cellar at mealtimes, this humble white crystals have been around and affected so many aspects of people's lives for thousands and thousands of years.
RSS Feed (xml)
