Salting The Earth

Salting the earth, or sowing with salt, is the ritual of spreading salt on conquered cities to symbolize a curse on their re-inhabitation. It originated as a symbolic practice in the ancient Near East and became a well-established folkloric motif in the Middle Ages. Since high levels of soil salinity damage most crops, there is a common misconception that salt was used to poison farmland, but the required amounts would be unfeasible for herbicidal warfare.