Eli5: how did humans get salt before modern means of transportation

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The human body needs salt to function properly, but surely First Nations of the prairies, people of central Africa or of Central Europe, from the Mongolian steppes and from other landlocked places, couldn’t have access to salt marshes. So where did they get it from?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Animals move. Animals carry salt. Sea animals are eaten by land animals (think fish : bears). Those animals move inland and die, get eaten by carrion feeders, who move further inland. Eventually, and in a sustained and continual loop, salt makes it way from the oceans to the land, to the inland, and back again.

Rain often carries salt, especially along the western coasts of continents. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but much of long-ago living areas were either on the ocean, or on the western side of their respective continents. Wind and rain and hurricanes carry salt from the ocean over the land (okay, they carry water which is infused with salt). And again, we have animals drinking the water, humans eating the animals.

Then there are salt marshes, which you rightly pointed out. Those exist. But there are also salt *mines*, where massive amounts of salt are stored by the Earth from deposits made in earlier geologic periods, and then there are salt *licks*. Aside from them being relatively small compared to a mine and that they’re associated with (goats? I think it is), I’m not sure what they are, exactly, but they sure *sound* like a large supply of salt to me.

TL;DR: Salt, especially salt in the form of sodium chloride, is not nearly as rare as it might at first seem.

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