Salt Trade (History)

[Mick Harper]

[Komorikid]

On current scientific methods if all the salt in the world's oceans was extracted and spread evenly over the world's land masses (where the majority of this salt is supposed to come from) it would form a layer over 500 feet thick. The average height of all landmasses above sea level is 2500 feet. This would mean that around 20% of landmasses were composed of salt. Something I find extremely hard to believe.

This is even more suspicious when one considers that the original 'salt leaching out of rock by the hydrological cycle' hypothesis was developed by Edmond Halley in the 18th century, whose principle evidence was that of the small number of lakes in the world without ocean outlets, such as the Dead Sea and the Caspian Sea, most have high salt content. Halley termed this process "continental weathering".

Halley never considered that these lakes could once have been remnants of salt seas that later became landlocked.

[Mick Harper]

Yes, these "minor seas" (I'd include the Baltic which is nearly fresh -- only two parts per thousand) are clearly the key to understanding overall brine theory. What about trying to imagine the Dead Sea drying up (which I believe it is doing) then overlaying a hundred million years of geological time...what would we end up with?

[Komorikid]

We don't have to imagine. A perfect example exists in Australia. The lower reaches of the Murray River. The surrounding lowlands overlay a former saltpan, which extends as far west as the Lake Eyre Basin. Over time sediments have covered much of the pan on both sides of the river. Gum trees, which are extremely tolerant to adverse climatic conditions, grew in abundance over this entire lowland area and provided a microenvironment for other flora to flourish.

In time the depth of soil and the deep root structure of gums kept the underlying salt in 'stasis' but when Europeans arrived they bulldozed the lowland gums to create field for grazing and agriculture. Without the deep-rooted trees the water table slowly rose and now the entire area is a barren salinated wasteland.

[Mick Harper]

Oh yeah, just a late addendum. You remember Saxa Salt? Well presumably that's etymologically related to Saxons i.e. Saxons = salt-traders. That would explain why Saxons are held to come from either the North German shore (evaporative salt) and/or several hundred miles away in Saxony (where there are lots of salt-mines). It would also explain why Anglo-Saxon is unknown anywhere (and why the Jutes and Angles chose to write it) - it is because it is a trading/writing language just like Latin and Greek.

[DPCrisp]

I didn't realise Saxony is so far south. I've seen the invasion plans with Jutes, Angles and Saxons setting off for England and assumed Saxony was up there! (BTW, Saltenburg is in or near Saxony.)

Maybe it was a lebensraum thing for the inland Saxons, who allied themselves with the sea-faring Angles? I was just sent this reference:

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0293/462_115/62980101/print.html

for 'Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?', which says:

[Mick Harper]

[DPCrisp]

Best I could find was

salt = salz

rock-salt = felsen-salz [= rock-salt]

brine = salzlösung [= salt solution]

Not very interesting or helpful, but it didn't take long to turn up this sort of thing on the internet:

[DPCrisp]

There was a programme Landscape Mysteries about alum mining on the coast near Whitby. Enormous mining/chemical industry at various sites around the coast. All very reminiscent of mining, purifying and trading in salt. Guess what? Even nearby Saltwich got a mention! [ Everywhere on that bit of coast is called This-wich or That-wich.]

(Alum was the (universal?) mordant that made the colours bright and fast; all of it imported until price/availability demanded a local source. The shale was burned for NINE MONTHS. The mind boggles... at the process and at the discovery of the process.)

They went looking for alum-bearing shales all around the coasts in the 17th century, leaving a trail of "Alum" place names where they were UNsuccessful, so they said. I don't get that.

At a basic level, we don't need salt or dyes or blah blah. But since everything that is human about us operates at a 'higher' level, we actually NEED salt, trade, colours, scents, flowers, trinkets... maybe above all, STATUS. So all this stuff was to kill for.

[DPCrisp]

Another Time Team programme was about Iron Age metal-working and shale-working at Poole Harbour, on the south coast.

The only alum place name I could find was Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight [ cf. Jutes! ], where The Needles trail away from the shore; but there is no alum shale there to speak of.

On the alum programme above, the former extent of the coast line was indicated by a string of rocks poking out of the waves: it had all been mined away (and shifted by sea).

I propose that Alum Bay had all its alum shale mined away in antiquity; and that the enormous physical- and time-scale of the alum-rendering process was revived rather than invented in the 17th century. It must have taken alchemists many years of playing around to work out that you needed to burn the shale for 9 months...

The name alum seems to have no known origin. Is it connected with alchemy?

[Mick Harper]

Yes, telly is becoming the regular source pour nos jours. Last night I discovered that contrary to the orthodox (so I was taught anyway) explanation that the Ancient Brits painted themselves with woad on their bare skin to frighten their enemies ("Bluddy 'ell, Marcus, they can't even afford clothes -- this should be a cake-walk"), the reason is quite other.

Woad, as a food dye, is ingested slowly into the body through the skin, and since the woad has been carefully impregnated with psilocybin (magic mushroom extract) it means that the individual soldier remains in a "berserker" frame of mind all day. Another example of how much cleverer the aborginals were than historians give credit for. Though not nearly as clever as the Romans. ("Ah, they're still using the old psilocybin trick -- this should be a cakewalk.")

[Komorikid]

The Chinese used various alums anciently for making hides supple and making drinking water potable. They also use it for mordants in the dyeing process with certain types of vegetable dyes. It was also used medicinally as a coagulant to stop bleeding, a deodorant and as a preservative in the pickling of vegetables and fruits.

Its value to the ancient and medieval Chinese was extremely high as it was a vital ingredient in producing their valuable silks and other cloths. Pepper, salt and cloves were the only natural products that rated a higher value.

[Mick Harper]

But have you found out how they made the wretched stuff? We've established that the Brits did it by burning rock alum for six months, a process that is not only incredibly burdensome in its own right but appears to be practically impossible to 'invent'. Now the Chinese have a pretty sophisticated alchemical tradition of their own, plus there's the Silk Road, plus there's these Tocharians with their colourful kilts halfway between. Surely we can put the whole story together, and to bed.

[Mick Harper]

It turns out we were spot-on about the Saxon Shore! I wonder if some academic Young Turks haven't started burrowing into this website. Anyway some bright and breezy young thing turns up with Frances Pryor in his Britain AD programme, standing beside a Roman Fort on the Norfolk coast opining:

"Yes, well, everybody's always thought that the Litus Saxonicum, the Saxon Shore, got its name because it was to protect Roman Britain from marauding Saxon pirates. But this is a misreading of a sixteenth century translation, and there's no archaeological evidence that this was what these things were for [taps wall of fort]."

Anyway it turns out (according to this bloke but it's a bit vague) that they were built by or for the Saxons to store all their gear i.e. to keep marauding Romano-Brits out. This makes complete sense from the Roman point of view because they had no ocean-going expertise of their own so were presumably very happy to give the trading rights with the barbarians to the Saxons. And, by the by, this is exactly the way the more successful Chinese administrations handled their local steppe barbarians--if you gave them privileged trading rights on the northern border, they made damn sure other barbarians didn't queer the pitch by invading.

What we reckoned originally was that the Saxon Shore is where the Saxons operated i.e. where the saltmakers converted seawater into salt. But clearly you wouldn't need a fort to store salt so it looks, on this reading, that our wider theory that The Saxons were general purpose North Sea traders is nearer the mark.

Actually this "fort" business is exactly how the various East India companies operated. They would build forts which were part secure store houses and part commercial depots at various places along a coastline that was mostly friendly but occasionally hostile.

It also explains the Saxon takeover when the Romans left. Since the Romans destroyed the entire British political structure during their four hundred years of occupation, it follows that when they went the only organised polity left would be the Saxon trading networks centred on their east coast forts. So, just like the British in India when the Mughal Empire declined, they started to link up the forts, pushed inland and gradually (in more or less exactly the same time-frame) took over the entire country.

[DPCrisp]

So what became of the Saxons in France, along their Saxon Shore? What's their connection with the Normans?