History Of Salt
Salt, NaCl, is a chemical compound made of sodium and chloride which has been exceptionally important to humans for thousands of years. Salt's ability to preserve food was a foundation of civilization. It helped to eliminate the dependence on the seasonal availability of food and it allowed travel over long distances. However, salt was difficult to obtain, and so it was a highly valued trade item to the point of being considered a form of currency by certain peoples. Many salt roads, such as the via Salaria in Italy, had been established by the Bronze age.
Today, salt is almost universally accessible, relatively cheap and often iodized.
Read more about History Of Salt: Sources, Salt Production, Other Salt Uses
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or salt:
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But we are spirits of another sort.
I with the morning’s love have oft made sport,
And like a forester the groves may tread
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessèd beams,
Turns unto yellow gold his salt green streams.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)