Did they just find salt on the ground and lick it? Did they drink animal blood? Did they drink ocean water (I hope not)?
I’ve always wondered this since I was a little kid.
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I read a book about salt [Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky] and it seems that added salt became very important for people who stopped being hunter gatherers and lived off more grain products. Animal products generally have enough sodium so that minimal additional salt is necessary for health (plus, anyone eating seafood would get plenty of salt). People who lived off mostly grains needed to find or make concentrated salts. When Europeans went to America in the early days, they were very interested in where the native people got their salt (salt was a valuable commodity so they wanted to trade for it when possible), but some tribes didn’t even have the concept of it. (Some did, and had their own methods for getting salt in their diet, but some tribes just ate lots of meat and were fine.) Anyway it’s a great book, highly recommended.
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