Why Salt Was Worth More Than Gold - The History of Salt

For most of human history, salt was not a seasoning. It was the difference between surviving the winter and not. Before refrigeration, salt was the only reliable way to preserve meat and fish. That made it the one commodity no city, army or empire could do without — and the people who controlled it controlled everything downstream. Trade routes were built for it. Governments taxed it. Entire populations revolted against those taxes. Across the Sahara, caravans carried slabs of it south to be traded against West African gold. In imperial China, the state monopoly on it funded the treasury for two thousand years. In France, the salt tax became one of the grievances that fed a revolution. In 1930, Gandhi walked 240 miles to the sea to make his own — and the British Empire arrested tens of thousands of people over it. Then, within a single century, industrial mining and refrigeration made it almost worthless. Today it sits on every table, and nobody looks at it twice. This is how the most valuable mineral in human history became the cheapest. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ New history documentaries every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. #history #documentary #worldhistory #ancienthistory #economichistory