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?
In: 146
There’s still salt even far from the sea, in most places. In northern Utah, for example, there’s a place called the “Great Salt Lake.” It lives up to its name. (Or at least it lives up to the “Salt” and “Lake” parts of its name. “Great” is debatable, for reasons I’ll discuss momentarily.) It’s what’s known as a “terminal lake” meaning it has no natural outflow- water flows into it and just stays until it evaporates. Terminal lakes are in general very salty, and despite being called “Great” the Great Salt Lake is far from the largest. Even freshwater contains some amount of salt, and when it flows into and evaporates out of a terminal lake, it leaves that salt behind, to be concentrated over the years, until the lake contains far more salt than a group of pre-industrial people could ever hope to use.
EDIT: I’ve just looked it up. The Great Salt Lake is over 600 miles inland, and is only the eighth largest terminal lake in the world, so I feel its title of “Great” is a little grandiose. They should have called it the Medium-sized Salt Lake.
Latest Answers