Salt is found almost everywhere, although this has been known only as a result of scientific advance in the past two hundred years.
Salt, called “white gold” could be found in the ground, the product of elaborate salt mines.
The Chinese were the first to discover that salt could be found deep under the earth’s surface at depths of several hundred meters or more.
The Chinese government in 2000 BC was the first to use salt to increase its revenue. In 645 BC, the Chinese state of Ch’i monopolized the salt industry and became prosperous.
By 300 BC, its monopoly had extended over both domestically produced and imported salt.
As long as 500 AD, the Chinese began to drill for brine a technique that was only discovered in Europe in the eighteenth century and was not known in Africa until the twentieth century.
The other oldest ways of obtaining salt was by boiling or evaporating sea water. This was done in ancient Egypt; in ancient Gaul (the Romans’ name for France): in France in the eighteenth century, to avoid paying the salt tax; and in India in the twentieth century as a way to gain independence from England and the British salt monopoly.
People of the ancient world, ate very salty food, particularly the Romans. Salt was also one of other reason for the Roman conquest of Gaul.
The prosperity of the Phoenician trading posts of the western Mediterranean had already been built on salt.
The Phoenicians were great producers of pickles food and garum and Rome could not ignore such prosperity once she was powerful enough to make it her own.
This is a very expensive and labor intensive way to get salt compared to mining rock salt.
Currently in the United States, between two and three million tons of salt are mined each year from mine that runs under the center of the United States, from Detroit and Cleveland south to Louisiana.
Salt: The White Gold
