Salt

Why has salt been so valuable historically? Were people in the past just too retarded to evaporate sea water?

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Salt was readily available and incredibly cheap if you lived next to the sea.

But if you lived more than a day's walk from the sea, you're going to have to buy it from a merchant, and the further the merchant has had to carry the salt, the more he's going to have to charge for it to make a profit. You really can't overestimate the difficult and expense of transporting goods long distances in pre-modern times.

>why is a mineral that is essential for life important?
Gee idk Timmy.

Even if you did live near the sea, sometimes you couldn't get it cheaply. I can't remember why, but medieval Scandinavians had a hell of a time getting salt, and a favorite thing for Vikings to loot was salt.

youtube.com/watch?v=g_3wRicL-QI

>evaporate sea water

That requires time, fuel or both, followed by transporting it to places not near the sea.

Fuel.
I come from a hanseatic city that got filthy rich throughout the centuries from sitting on a salt mine. Most forests have been chopped down in large area around the town.

>Why has salt been so valuable historically?

Because it keeps your food longer preservable

IIRC the only method of getting salt from seawater was evaporating the water, and scandinavia's sun wasn't strong enough to fully evaporate the water over the short period of time in which it was present.

Evaporating sea water doesn't yield very much salt at small scales and is more labor intensive than you might think.

At the same time, demand for salt was way higher in the middle ages because using it as a preservative expends far more salt than just using it as a seasoning.

÷ Evaporating sea water takes a huge lot of fuel to do if you live on the north side of Europe
÷ Transport makes it costlier where it's not available
÷ It is a necissity to preserve meat and also to make food like breas enjoyable to eat, which means the demand was huge, regardless of the price, which could then be hiked by merchants
÷ For the same reason in France at least, the state heavily taxed salt because that was one tax people would have difficulties avoiding

Evaporating sea water only works if you're in a region dry enough to evaporate the sea water quickly. As soon as it rains the salt is gone. This kept it out of reach of a lot of cultures who simply didn't settle in the right lands and were forced to buy or steal it from those who did.

As for WHY salt was valuable, it's because it allowed you to preserve food. Partially alleviating your reliance on the seasons is a pretty big deal, and having a non-perishable food supply in storage helps your people to survive crop blight.

FUCK SALT!

>have to settle within range of both the coast and fresh water
90% of all settlements are invalidated.

>have to settle in an area with enough timber to use as fuel to evaporate the salt
90% of the remaining settlements are invalidated.

>have to settle in an area with minimal rainfall so all of your hard work doesn't end up being washed away in a matter of seconds
90% of the remaining settlements are invalidated.

Shit's hard, dude. Salt was expensive for a reason. It's not that they didn't have the know-how, it's that they just happened to settle in the wrong place.

Its an electrolyte that you need for proper body function

They did evaporate sea water though.

I think you underestimate just how much salt cunts used back then. Every fucking morsel of meat needed to be 5% salt or else it would turn to shit in an afternoon.

Kek

Lindy has a surprisingly good video on the subject.

youtube.com/watch?v=g_3wRicL-QI

I can't believe how stupid ancient people were, they could just drink a bit of sewater and have enough salt for a week

You can’t burn salt

Yeah you can. Try it.

There's Brawndo for that.

Try to evaporate enough water to get 10 tonnes of salt.