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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Vast majority of kingdom animalia needs sodium, did all of the animal kingdom wait billions of years for humans to evolve to invent modern transportation to get sodium?
We got sodium the same way all other animals still get sodium to this day, from our diet.
A lot of places have rock salt fairly close to the surface, and deposits are absolutely massive. In romania the oldest recorded salt mine is 700 years old while the oldest known source of salt are some salt caves that are believed to have been used 7000 years ago
Things like salt (spice trade) were exactly what started large scale international commerce tho. So it’s kinda like asking how people got around at all before modern transportation, they were working on it.
Funny seeing all these comments about what salt used to be worth; but in 2023 reddit comments are free!
It’s simple : using the old means of transportation. Also, relying on salt mines rather than salt marshes. There are historical records of salt mines and boats/land caravans transporting them all around Europe and Northern Africa. I can’t say for over parts of the world, especially in America, but salt was broadly commercialized BCE.
Lol Salt can also be mined in mines… We have few of those in Poland, including oldest one here in Wieliczka. This was very expensive good though, king had ownership over it.
Salt mines. There are several known stockpiles of naturally occuring sodium chloride in various parts of the world. The Verde mine in Arizona was used by the local tribes as a trading commodity for several hundred years.
Source: I live right down the road from the Verde mine and there is a great Native American archeology center right in town.
Salt deposits in soil and rocks is not uncommon in most areas. Salt mining may have been one of the earliest source of trade and industry and may predate modern *H. sapiens.*
Salt can be obtained from seafood. It can also be obtained from the dead bark or dead leaves of certain trees and shrubs, and plants where it accumulates due to evaporation.
There were a number of methods used. Areas with tidal mud flats and warm, dry summers, the mud flats can be dammed and high tide allowed to slowly percolate through a series of pools where the water evaporates.
Likewise areas with deposits of salty soil (caused by intermittent, seasonal ponds and lakes), salt can be obtained by adding water the filtering the mud with cloth, then allowing the water to evaporate from the catching container indoors.
There have been trade routes for thousands of years that brought things like salt inland. Everywhere there were people there were trade routes. At least 10,000 years ago they find goods in archaeological digs that originated sometimes thousands of miles away
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