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Salt Trade (History)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I challenged some academic hotshot on the question of why the Atlantic coast of France is called the Litus Saxonicus and he replied that it wasn't, and that only the Channel coast from the Straits to the Cotentin Peninsula were so called, i.e. exactly as in Britain, as a defensive measure, and which would destroy my/our/your thesis stone-dead.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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The first thing I found when I looked up Litus Saxonicum was a Department of History, University of South Carolina reference to
Ancient name: Litus Saxonicum
Modern name: Saxon Shore (Loire-Atlantique)
Roman Province: Lugdunensis III
French Department: Loire-Atlantique
...
Specific Ancient References: Not.dig. "Grannona in littore saxonico"
And the first thing on looking up Loire-Atlantique was some place proud of its salt-making heritage.

Incidentally, practically the first words in Peter Beresford-Ellis' The Ancient World of the Celts, caption a picture of the village of Hallstatt[sp?] and tell of it being the centre of an ancient salt trade.
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Tani


In: Fairye
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I'm sure you know that it didn't start with La Tene - it started with Hallstatt. That's in today's Austria, and the name-giving place is a burial ground where they unearthed thousands and thousands of burials with what was later dubbed Hallstatt-style stuff.
And that was and still is considered the ...er...starting point of continental Celtic culture. And guess what? Hall- means salt. I'm sure you knew that. La Tene is considered (again by ortho-archaeology) the follow-up to Hallstatt, and from there and with 'culture' in their backpacks, the Celts are supposed to spread westwards... and the rest is ortho-history.

It would make a lot of sense (if I may say so), and it would explain some otherwise VERY strange happenings, i.e. the presence of tall mummified Caucasians with blond and red hair, wearing tartans and beards - at least the boys - in China (found in the Tarim/Takla Makan Desert, now residing in the Museum in Urumchi, well worth checking out!!) What if these guys are 'Celts/Saxons', prospecting for salt along what later came to be known as the Silk Road?!

I always had a very strong suspicion that Celts and (North-)Germans are not much different, considering that both mythologies and religions have so many similarities, and then there's the Gundestrup Cauldron, as 'Celtic' as can be - found in Denmark... and what about the Cimbrians - they still don't know whether they are to be considered Celts or Germans - some scholars write of them as a "celtic-german mixed tribe" (how convenient). And both 'Celts' and 'Germans' had the habit tof giving people up to the bogs (if you haven't read John Gigsby's Warriors of the Wasteland yet - DO SO ASAP, it's brilliant and has a lot of valuable info and deals with exactly that subject) - so there are too many features in common for both to be dismissed.

More and more I think all that dubbing and naming of the Europeans at that time (roughly from the end of the Neolithic to the early Iron Age) is maybe just a mirror of today's habit of dividing people into nations and, well, peoples. Maybe there is no such thing as Celtic and Saxon ... maybe it was what we should become: one people with regionally varying culture, language (maybe!). BUT: quod est demonstrandum - or not...
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Oakey Dokey



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Just a few words on salt off the top of my head to set things in perspective.

Salt is extremely abundant on the earth and has many benefits and drawbacks to its presence such as its alkilinity in soil (therefore soil's ability to grow different types of plants) to its presence in arid regions allowing civilisation to take off.

The problem for us is that Salt is greatly underestimated for its importance in antiquity and mainly because it's been lumped in with the 'spice' trade when in fact it was a main export for certain areas. The word salary (reference to wages paid) actually means paid in salt or "worth in salt". IT WAS THAT IMPORTANT.

The most abundantly used salt was NaCl common table salt and was obtained in ancient times by sea evaporation (sea salt or rock salt) in special ponds (I've actualy seen this in Fuertaventura in the Canary Islands) or salt springs. Modern times are different: we mine for ancient sea bed salt.

Rock salt is also an evaporite and can be called halite and is obtained in various ways and has a crystalline transparent appearance but can also form white yellow and powdery appearances (I'm guessing rock salt is strictly the large crystals), the main use of which was preservation of food and the dead but also in diet to an extent.

Another important salt trade was in Na2CO3, sodium carbonate, and was used in wound dressing and cleaning.

Salt is a general term and encompasses many chemicals but these two are the most relevant to everday living in the past. As far as I remember, an ancient Jewish city was named after salt but you'd have to check that out yourself as I can't confirm it yet (I'll have a look around) I think the 'more' recent name began with Ammon or something (which in itself is interesting). I'll get back to this tho.

Incidentally, King Herod was in power to 'make salt' for the Romans.
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Mick Harper
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Amman, Jordan is the only Muslim capital named after a pagan deity, Amun.

But, uno problemo. We had been proceeding on the basis that sea-salt was the stuff evaporated from the sea and brine-pools whereas rock-salt was actually mined in salt-mines. This is very important because Saxo=Rock [in Latin, German(?)] and our theory depends on Saxons being rock(salt) miners who exported the stuff all over inland mittel Germany and (crucially) via the Elbe and the Oder (hence "Anglo"-Saxons) to feed the Scandinavian market (the Baltic is more or less salt-free).

Your reply seems to suggest that rock-salt is just encrusted sea-salt evaporate.
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Oakey Dokey



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Salt production took off in Britain because of sea-level fluctuations in the Mediterranian affecting salt production there (flooding). This flooding was also felt in Britain, creating bogs and peat marshes which were ideal for fuel for the 'firing' technique the Romans used for fast production of salt.

Later, Britain had no choice but to turn to open-pan methods of natural evaporation as the sea once again rose, cutting off the peat bogs by submerging them beyond use. The Romans exported the salt all over Europe in the years their own supplies 'dried up'. It was also one of the major reasons for holding a relatively worthless Judaean province as it was the only other major salt production outside Pakistan. This is as much as I could glean initially.

Ooh and I think the region of Amman was refered to as the 'valley of salt' when King David fought a tribe there and had many battles with them. Amman was its later name but its earlier name was directly linked with salt (I just can't recall the full details at the moment as it's a long time since I read up on it, sorry).

Hal and Sal are used in many ways to describe salt production and places of salt production and is linked to the evaporation of salt in the prefix Hal (halide).
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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Ammon = Amun. Sal Ammoniacus (obtained from camel dung apparently!) gives us ammonia, which forms salts and has all kinds of uses... Ammon is a Sun god, right?

Tanwen said Hallstatt means salt town. (Well, stadt is town, statt is something like place.) I checked my Welsh dictionary: uh-oh, salt = halen. Hallstatt, the "Celtic" place is a Celtic name?

Not so fast. Hal for salt is Greek, as in halogen (elements that form salts: fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, astatine). Welsh goes with the Greek (whose relationship to English and every other langauge I do not begin to fathom)?

Irish is salann. Actually, we all go with the Greek, or whatever it is, 'cos Sal = Hal.

I've seen 's' and 'h' as cognate before, e.g. in Sind/Hind, something to do with Hindus and the lumber they (used to) export to the Med.
Curious that halo- = salt- and halo = disk of (sun) light. Cf. Ammon. Salt is the gift of the Gods or something?

I just read that hunter-gatherer diets have plenty of salt. When you start eating wheat and potatoes, etc. as your staple, then you need to supplement your salt intake. So this need for salt goes back A LONG WAY - far beyond nice-to-haves like metals and spices. What I don't understand is how anybody knew they needed to add salt to their food! (On the other hand, if the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis has anything going for it, maybe we've just known it for millions of years.)

And another thing... sea salt takes a lot of effort, boiling off the water. Being able to dig up big chunks of it must have been like writing your own cheques -- while it lasted.

There must be a (Lovelock-style) salt cycle: sloshing around in the sea; sometimes deposited as solid ('locked up'); eventually dug up or washed (leached, weathered, etc.) out of the rocks back into circulation again.
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Oakey Dokey



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'The Silk Road' and the spice trade are linked. Here's how:

The original translation for silk road was misread and the interpretation should be 'salt road' (I think the original mistake was something like 'kings road' or something) as China was also a major exporter of salt but they added around 25% of a type of pepper to theirs.

And Rock salt is the 'rock' form where old inland seas dry up and become super-saturates and then make flats or get buried. But it is also used to describe any salt that looks like a lump of rock, even Halites are included (but proper term is compressed salt).
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Mick Harper
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Does this tie in north and south, since Zeus and Ammon were equivalents (Didn't Alexander visit the Zeus/Ammon temple in Siwya?)

What's the position of salt in the desert, anyway? Is it plentiful? Do people need lots of it because of evaporation, food decay in the heat etc. Can salt be carried economically on camels?
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DPCrisp


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Well there's enough natron (a salt of sorts) to mummify enough people for them to be used later to power steam trains and be ground up as stomach powders.

Salt might get weathered out with the sand, but then... it'll be mixed with sand. Then again, flash floods, rapid evaporation... I dunno the details but there must be plenty of opportunities there.

Almost came to blows recently about whether salt tablets should be in survival packs: the answer is no. Even the guy who developed salt tablets for the army realises he overdid it. BUT that's in the short term. In the long term, it depends whether Eastern Promise has anything to do with licking each other all over.

I dunno whether decay is much of a problem in the high desert. You need bugs to rot and if it's too arid and everything is desiccated... (Like you can never catch a cold in Antarctica.) But there will be plenty of places where preservation is a big issue...
Camels? There is that Silk Road thing...
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Tani


In: Fairye
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In 2002, Wessex Arch unearthed the grave of two men near Amesbury, about 5km southeast of Stonehenge. Richest burials of early Bronze Age yet: the 'Stonehenge Archer' and his younger companion, C14 dated to 2400-2200 BCE. Copper Knifes analysed: Metal coming from Spain and Western France. Gold earrings: metal likely from Central Europe.

Best yet to come: Oxygen Isotope analysis of teeth enamel: the guy was from ==>>around the Alps <<==, most likely Switzerland, Austria or Southern Germany. That puts him in the immediate vicinity of the great salt places like Hallstatt, Hallein etc. So we do have a trader here, folks: maybe he came to trade salt and metal....
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Mick Harper
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Of course!!! Why didn't I make the connection? Mind you we have to be careful. It cannot be that they were actually bringing salt--it is surely too far from Hallstatt to Avebury to make that an economic proposition--but this would certainly count as fair supporting evidence for a Europe-wide salt-trade nexus of some kind.
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Oakey Dokey



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Something worth more attention is a peculiar effect in firing techniques of ceramics. When salt is added to a kiln it produces a high grade glaze on the first attempt, something unusual in ceramic production as it normally requires 'maturing', the term used for two separate firings. It works by drawing silicates (glass) within the pottery to the surface. Earliest recorded use I know of is around 1400. In normal glazing techniques a first firing is performed, then the piece is removed and brushed with a glaze, then fired once more to seal the pottery/ceramic.

The most famous pieces are from German manufacturers from around the 1400's to 1700's, which produced high grade stoneware, very sought after at the time (and by museums today). I have been investigating if this method of glazing has any great antiquity, as one of the major industries throughout past history has been brick and pottery production. I have found modern references to salt glazing of brick work but none as yet in antiquity, certainly no proof that it had any great industrial significance, or that it was even performed.

Being as how pottery stretches back some 40,000 years I thought something more substantial would turn up for such a simple and effective production of quality pottery and brickwork.
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Mick Harper
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This is pretty important. We've been trying to establish that various pre-historic (and maybe historic) skills are closely linked to particular groups of itinerants. If salt (trading) can be linked in with sophisticated pottery colour-glazing and hence into alchemy we might be in business.
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Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
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And another thing... sea salt takes a lot of effort, boiling off the water. Being able to dig up big chunks of it must have been like writing your own cheques -- while it lasted.

This is not true. Sea salt is the most common form of salt and is arguably the oldest form of salt production. It can be harvested naturally wherever coastal tidal conditions are present and artificially in some areas where they are not. No boiling is necessary, just the natural evaporation of the sun is all that is needed. The Atlantic coast of France and shallows of the Guérande region of France in the Med still use traditional methods for producing sea salt in large quantities. It was by far the most common form of salt production in ancient times, as it required a minimum amount of labour and manpower to harvest the large quantities required for trade. It could then easily be transported by ships, which were readily at hand. It's possible that salt mining developed when rock salt was discovered as a competitor to the coastal salt trade, which would have been expensive to transport to inland areas.

Sea salt generally refers to unrefined salt derived directly from the sea. It is harvested through channelling seawater into large shallows and allowing the sun and wind to evaporate it naturally. Most sea salt is unrefined so it still contains traces of other minerals, including iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc and iodine. Some of the most common sources for sea salt include the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean (particularly in France, on the coast of Brittany). Sea salt is thought to be healthier and more flavourful than traditional table salt, which is mined from rock salt.
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