Perspective Salt, Liam Cole Young

PERSPECTIVE SALT LIAM COLE YOUNG SALT HIDDEN HISTORIES Liam Cole Young is an Associate Professor in the School of journalism and Communication at University in , Canada , where he teaches and writes about and culture . He is the author of List Cultures Knowledge and Poetics from Mesopotamia to . His favourite salt is Mon from Wales . Learning Outcomes After reading and discussing this text , students should be able to LIAM COLE YOUNG 365

Describe the intersections between culture , economics , and technology . Explain how human cultures ascribe symbolic meaning to foods that transcend or nutrition . Build links between the histories of food production , and consumption and aspects of contemporary food cultures and supply chains . INTRODUCTION Salt is so in our lives as to be banal , so woven into the fabric of our culinary and lives that we hardly notice it . Every pantry or spice collection , in every corner of the world , has some form of salt . It is one of the five of taste , along with sweetness , bitterness , sourness , and umami . Salting is the oldest and most popular technique of food . For thousands of years , humans have used it to extend the life of meats , fish , and vegetables , but also of dairy , in the ing of cheese and butter . In this way , salt has been an important mediator of nutrients and protein , allowing humans to nourish themselves during periods of climate unpredictability , famine , or war . Some argue our appetite for salt is hard wired . Our neural networks require sodium , but our bodies do not produce it sodium chloride , the chemical name for common salt , offers a cheap and abundant way for our cells to metabolize precious sodium ions . This list of common and consequential uses of salt could go on and on . Almost every civilization from which we still have rial traces has gathered , traded , and used it for a variety of poses , making salt a central player in the emergence and history of what we call human Its ubiquity across cultural 366 SALT

and historical time makes salt fun to think about but also difficult to study . All we can hope to do is scratch the surface . In this chapter , I tackle this challenge by exploring a few episodes from salt many histories , using three lenses taste , trade , and technology . TASTE To think about taste is inevitably to think about culture . It raises questions such as how is salt used and enjoyed , and where , why , and by whom ?

Or , what and how does salt signify in cultural practices and texts , like ancient rituals and recipes , or modern representations and advertisements ?

Culture , as Raymond Williams famously argued , is the stuff of human , customs , values , rituals , but also the way people imagine and tell stories about their lives , experiences , and Salt at the centre of many such stories . In fact , the question of how salt became cultural teaches us a lot about this complicated concept of culture . Salt stands at the threshold between ideas of nature and For many sands of years , salt was a naturally occurring substance that humans and animals used instinctively to regulate levels of sodium and water in their bodies ( this is why salt licks are still used in animal husbandry to herd and organize the movement of animals ) But over time and alongside other technological and cultural transformations , salt became a complex and contested object of taste , meaning , and value , one that offers us important insights into more general processes by which the earliest human societies transformed from small , bands of gatherers into sedentary , agricultural communities . Anthropologists sometimes refer to this process as one of or By this , they simply mean . See Williams 1958 . LIAM COLE YOUNG 367

that over many thousands of years , Homo sapiens transformed from a , creature ( with which today human beings have little in common ) into one that we more readily recognize as our physiological and cultural ancestor ple who stood upright , made fire , cooked , farmed , lived alongside a relatively large number of others for long of time , developed rituals , language and other forms of , and so on . In short , a species with culture . Salt was present during all these complex transformations . There is archaeological evidence of salt mining in the Valley of from 3500 , salt refining in the River Delta from 900 , and pig salting at during the late Bronze Age . There is even some evidence of a salt trade at Jericho as early as 9000 ! Such evidence that , along with cooking and making fire , uses of salt played an important role in these processes of . These early human societies eventually developed systems of writing and representation that allowed them preserve and transmit knowledge toward the future . Such records give us a more precise sense of how they used salt . One area of use was health and wellness . For many centuries prior to modern medical science , healers and alchemists speculated about the of the human body and how certain substances might be used to alleviate pain , remove parasites , and cure disease . These were important goals because , as humans set down roots , from smaller nomadic communities into agricultural settlements , viruses , bacteria , and malnutrition in place along with them . To combat these problems , a of regimes were proposed in which salt played a crucial role . The , a compendium of traditional Indian cine likely compiled in the or century CE , suggests salt be used in skin and eye care , enemas , and even to treat wounds after surgery . In the century CE , of , wrote about the Roman goddess of safety and , who was named 368 SALT

after salt and came to stand as a term for health and even . Chinese medicine has long held that salt is good for the kidneys and liver . It is likely that these uses of salt in early forms of healthcare established habits , or even addictions , that would continue as human bodies became healthier . This leads historian . to suggest salt as part of the struggle of culture against nature , a weapon of culture supplied by nature , which became part of culture In spite or because of these practical uses , salt has long served as a powerful metaphor . Most of us have probably heard one referred to as a salt of the earth type , but did you know that phrase comes from the Bible ?

Matthew , Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its savour , wherewith shall it be salted ?

It is thenceforth good for nothing , but to be cast out , and to be trodden under foot of men ) Maybe you ve had a particularly salty teacher , or a friend whose advice you always take with a grain of Most languages and cultural traditions have these types of metaphors . When the exhausted his ideas , he boiled salt notes an ancient Burmese proverb about despair . From the Chinese tradition comes the saying , Just as dishes without salt are tasteless , so words without reason are powerless ( To explore such metaphors and other cultural aspects of salt is to be less interested in how salt gets to a kitchen pantry or ing table than in what it means and how it is used by people in such places . The double meaning of the English word taste these cultural questions . Taste can be used to describe both cooking and class relations for instance , how salt combines with other foods to create but at the same time can mark one status and power ( their good or bad taste ) This was true during the European Middle Ages , when only . 1992 , 26 . LIAM COLE YOUNG 369

als and nobility had ready access to salt . Salt at a table signified the hosts power , privilege , and elegant taste . This is why salt lars from the period ( used to store salt on the table , long before the introduction of salt shakers ) were ornately designed using the finest of materials such as silver and gold . Such class dynamics inevitably lead to questions of access and power , the focus of the next section . TRADE Many scholars consider histories of salt as a commodity and staple good , asking such questions as How is salt transported and traded , and where , by whom , and for what ?

This approach encompasses the question of value specifically , how in many salt was considered white Roman soldiers were once paid not in gold or silver , but salt ! That where the English word salary comes was the Roman word for salt . Salt ancient histories are present not only in words like salary , but also in basic infrastructures of transportation that continue to shape global trade and supply chains of food and other goods . For thousands of years , salt roads routes established primarily for the salt like veins across the , moving people , things , and information from place to place . These infrastructure projects took a lot of time , energy , and resources to build , which makes them valuable , heavy , and difficult to change . And so , when it came time to make , people tended not to replace them but instead to build on top of or around them . This is what scholars and historians of infrastructure and communication refer to as path . A great example is how the cables were stretched around the globe using poles , wires , and undersea cables , originally built for telephone and telegraph networks . The same was true in ancient times . Today , all roads lead to Rome is a metaphor , but it once expressed a basic truth about 370 SALT

how all people , things , and information of consequence through the Imperial capital city walls . But the Romans didn start from scratch , either . They built this network on top of ing pathways and trade routes , many of which were , according to archaeologists , first used in the salt trade . Roman roads are a famous example of how transport and infrastructures are important sites of economic and political power . This continued to be the case during Europe Middle Ages ( 500 to ) In Northern Germany , for instance , an Old Salt Road ( Alte ) linked the inland city of , which stood atop one of Europe largest ground salt deposits , with , a major port on the Baltic Sea . There was far more salt at than local and ing communities required . Therefore , the Church , which trolled the saltworks , began to transport this surplus to . From there , it could be exported to countries such as Norway and Sweden , where demand for salt exceeded supply given the importance of salted fish to Scandinavian diets . Given the vast wealth and power derived from this trade route , those who trolled it sought to defend the route from attacks and preserve the free of goods and capital . This was a primary factor in the founding of the League , a group of Northern pean towns , and merchants that banded together to each others economic interests and infrastructure . In some ways , this security and trade agreement was a cursor to modern interstate cooperatives such as the European Union , or even the United Nations . Some scholars in fact point to the League as an important step toward the ing of modern state system inaugurated with the Peace of , a treaty that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648 . This treaty established important principles that continue to inform international relations and law , such as the right of each individual state to sovereignty and law over its own LIAM COLE YOUNG 371

tory , the standardization of international borders , and the of , among many others . That so many resources and so much human labour have been devoted to the extraction and movement of salt testifies to the value it has held for most of its history . But before labour , and value become concepts used by scholars to describe the movement of people and commodities , they are ple practices and techniques , forms of work that humans conduct using a variety of technologies . This takes us into the third and final section . TECHNOLOGY To think about technology is to think about how humans do tools and techniques do we use to enhance or extend our bodies ?

What systems do we develop to cooperate and coordinate our actions with other people , sometimes across vast distances ?

What structures do we built to improve and enhance our ability to work , communicate , organize , or late resources and wealth ?

Who owns them ?

What are the of these our bodies , environments , other people and creates ?

These are big questions , all of which can be understood within the broad category of The extraction , movement , uses , and exchange of salt help us to consider some of these questions . Salt was so valuable for so long because methods of production were labour and resource . They took a long time and required a lot of blood , sweat , and tears . By far the most popular technique was to derive salt through solar evaporation . People would take brine ( salty water ) either from the ocean or an underground source , put it in a large vessel , and wait . Heat from the sun would slowly evaporate the water , leaving salt crystals behind . Some salt is still produced in this way , particularly in coastal regions . But humans are 372 SALT

, especially when there is money to be made , and so they began to experiment with ways of speeding up the process . The most effective and thus popular of these new techniques was to heat the brine using fuel sources . Until recently , the only way to do this was by burning wood or coal . The door , brine vessels thus became cauldrons , and saltworks became encased in structures with protruding . This had environmental can imagine how much wood or coal was required to keep the cauldrons hot enough to boil water away almost 24 hours a day . Thats why most of the areas surrounding old European works have very few trees they were all chopped down to be used as fuel ! Beyond these environmental and geographic impacts , gies and techniques of salt production had further consequences on statecraft , migration , and patterns of colonization . Salt was at the centre of the Age of Exploration in the and centuries , which started with European powers making regular voyages to fish the waters off the coast of what today we call North America . Salt was necessary as a provision for sailors diets , but more importantly it was necessary to preserve the catch for return to European markets . Return voyages took days or longer than fish would normally salt helped keep the fish from rotting . Since solar evaporation was then the dominant mode of salt production , countries with a lot of sunshine like France , Spain , and Portugal were at a distinct advantage to cloudy countries like England . Their ships could bring salt from home and thus salt the catch immediately , on board in barrels , without landing the ship . This process required a lot of salt but it was fast , efficient , and easy to do in a confined space like the deck of a ship . As a result , ships from sunny tries could fish to capacity and return to European markets very quickly . Cloudy Britain , by contrast , did not have ready access to salt and had to acquire it via trade . Because this was more LIAM COLE YOUNG 373

, complex , and time consuming , British crews were to find ways to preserve their catch that required less salt . One way was to spread the fish out so it could be dried in the sun before being lightly salted . But spreading out required more space than was available on the deck of a ship , and more time than they could afford to stay at sea . So , British ships began ing at sunny spots , such as Avalon Peninsula , or along the coast of what is today called New England . In ing the catch on land , British crews began to build ture that could be left behind and used again in the future . They even began to leave sailors behind to make room for more fish on the return These were some of the first European footholds on the North American continent , which had found consequences for contact with Indigenous communities and the eventual projects of European settlement and tion . All these decisions , at least in part , were motivated by access to salt . These examples help us understand that though technological innovation often occurs in the service of what seem like banal , to find , use , and trade consequences are anything but . Looking at these tools , techniques , systems , and infrastructures remind us that broad patterns of history settle into place only through practices and objects of everyday life . CONCLUSION In this chapter , I have surveyed some lessons from the history of salt through the lenses of taste , trade , and technology . These lessons show how a substance we today take for granted , or hardly notice at all , has played many important roles throughout human history . German philosopher Hans Georg once wrote , When you take a word in your mouth you must realize . 1978 , 374 SALT

that you have not taken a tool that can be thrown aside if it wont do the job , but you are fixed in a direction of thought which comes from afar and stretches beyond The same is true of food . When we take a mineral like salt in our mouths , we are not just enjoying a tasty . We are participating in ancient and ongoing histories of taste , trade , and technology that stretch far beyond us , which are haunted by complicated and contested meanings , and which teach us about many histories of power and struggle . Discussion Questions What are other foods or spices that we take for granted and that have consequential hidden tories ?

What are some further consequences of humans learning to extend the lifespan of food through salt preservation ?

For most of recorded human history , salt was known as white What are some of the sons it seems to have faded in value and over the last hundred years ?

Over the course of two to three days , observe every encounter you have with salt . Count , for instance , the number of times you add it to food while cooking or eating . Consider the salt content on . 1975 , 496 . LIAM COLE YOUNG 375 ingredient lists of foods you consume , and keep an eye out for salt usage ( such as on roads during winter ) After a few days , survey and on your inventory of uses and encounters . What surprises you about the role of salt in your life ?

Did you consume more or less salt than you expected ?

How many unconscious uses of salt did you encounter ?

Pick a source of salt in your cupboard and try to reconstruct its supply chain . In what part of the world was it harvested , and how ?

What can you find out about the company on the label ?

Are they a producer of salt , or just a distributor ?

How do they move salt from the point of production to sites where it is packaged , then on to sites for consumer purchase ?

What about the workers that help harvest , package , and ship the salt ?

What are their working ?

Find a way to creatively visualize this salt supply chain . How do such supplement our knowledge about tastes , trade , and technologies of salt ?

Does your supply chain map onto older supply chains , such as those between European imperial capitals and what were once their colonial holdings in the Global South , or perhaps onto an ancient supply routes like the Alte ?

Additional Resources Le Goff , and . 1956 . Une Sur Le Sel Dans . Revue Du 38 ( 150 ) 201 . Salt A World History . New York Random House . 376 SALT Laszlo , 2001 . Salt Grain of Life . New York Columbia University Press . 1986 . Sweetness and Power The Place of Sugar in Modern History . New York Penguin . 2010 934 . and Civilization . Chicago of Chicago Press , 1978 . Neptune Gift , a History of Common Salt . Hopkins University Press . References , 1992 . Salt and Civilization . London . 1975 . Truth and method . New York Press . Williams , 1958 . Culture and Society , London . 1978 . The Cod Fisheries The History of an national . Revised edition . University of Press . LIAM COLE YOUNG 377