The so called liquomen is made.

In this manner, the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted.

Small fish, either the best smelt or small mullet or sprats or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small, are all salted together and shaken frequently, and are fermented in the sun.

After it has been reduced in the heat, garam is obtained from it.

In this way, a large, strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish, and the garum streams into the basket.

In this way, the so called liquimen is strained through the basket.

When it is shaken up, the remaining refuse is alec Next, if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is to say, not fermented in the sun, but to boil it, you do it this way when the brine has been tested so that an egg having been thrown in floats if it sinks it is not sufficiently salty, and throwing the fish into the brine in a newly made earthen way pot and adding in some oregano, you place it on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is, until it begins to reduce a little, some throw and boiled down must unfermented wine.

Next throwing the cooled liquid into a filter.

You toss it a second and a third time through the filter until it turns out clear.

After having covered it, store it away.

So did you like that?

What is happening at home?

Instructions to make this fishy salty, fishy sauce called garum that's like was very popular in ancient Rome.

That recipe comes from I mean, the original recipes are probably hundreds of years earlier, but that one comes from nine hundred CE from a Greek agricultural manual.

I have so many questions, like what what why?

I mean, who doesn't love a little salty sauce on there?

A little sauce.

So it's the sauce, so you're not going to eat the fish.

It's like the sauce part that you're keeping.

I mean it's it's also like made from fishy, fishy.

You're salting the fish, but it's this, it's the filter.

It's the filterrait that you're keeping.

Yeah, but I imagine it it tastes fishy, fishy, yeah yeah, yeah, it's like.

Fish sauce.

I mean, I don't know what it tastes like.

But I I mean, should we try it?

I would love to.

I love fish sauce, so me too could be good.

Yeah, this is going to be a couple of weird episodes.

I'm really excited about it.

Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron aman Updyke and this is this podcast will kill you.

It's getting weird.

But we're talking about Salt.

Salt, Salt.

This all starts two episodes.

Honestly, though, like I think it ended up it started.

We've been through a roller coaster of feelings about Salt throughout the process.

The making of it started because I was like, I bought the book Salt.

I found it at a thrift store and I was like, I've been wanting to read this book for a while.

And I was like, I basically strong armed you into doing two episodes on Salt.

It's accurate.

And then I was like I don't want to do this anymore, and you were like, no, I found a good story, Let's do this.

And I was like okay, and then I was like, oh cool, Actually Salt is really interesting.

Yeah.

Really, we went back and forth several times, had some regrets, came through it.

Yeah, I think we'll have no regrets at the end of it.

No, I'm already like really stoked for today.

I am too.

I am too.

We do have some business to get out of the way first.

Yeah, should we like warn people what these two episodes are going to be about.

Oh, yeah, that's probably a good idea.

Yeah, the first episode, so today, what I'm going to be talking about is kind of the historical aspects of salt, like why when did we start using it as much as we did?

And some just like honestly, you're gonna be well equipped to hit up the next Trivia night if there are any questions about salt.

I love that.

I'm really I hope there's a whole salt based section in your next Trivia Day.

That wouldn't that be If there is, please let us know.

That would be so great.

And then you next episode, Aaron, tell them what you're going to be talking about.

I'm going to talk about salt and our health.

There you go, broadly, very very broadly speaking.

I'm excited for this because I feel like there is so much noise.

Yes, okay, but you're right, we have some business first.

Quarantiny times, Quarantiny time I love how it's turned from like a fun thing that we do to business.

It is business, the business portion of it.

We're drinking grains of salt.

Grains of salt because there's a lot.

Of the history of salt that you should take with a grain of salt, and there's definitely aspects of the current salt debate today you should take some grains of salt with yeah.

Or maybe not a or not.

And the grains of salt is based on.

A cocktail that you know has been established for a while that has salt in the name.

It's called the Salty Dog.

The Salty Dog, which we also done this before.

Maybe it's fine, it's fine, we're calling it something new.

Yeah, I feel like after one hundred something episodes we are allowed to repeat if we Yeah, if we try our hardest not to.

Do whatever we want.

It's grapefruit juice and either vodka or gin, whatever your pick, and the assaulted rim.

Yeah, it's pretty simple.

Pretty simple, pretty dilish.

Yeah, we'll post the full recipe on our website.

This podcast will kill you.

Nope, we don't do that anymore.

We're gonna try though Aaron List site.

This podcast with Killara dot com and all of our social media is where you will definitely see it there, yes, yeah, yeah.

Also on our website you can find all sorts of things, from transcripts to links to our bookshop dot org affiliate page, our Goodreads lists.

You can find links to merch You can find oh man who does a link to a first hand account, form contact us form stuff like that.

Everything?

Yeah?

Uh?

Anything else?

Or can we just get started?

Tell me about salt erin I can't wait too.

Okay, let's take a quick break and then I'll get right to it.

Aaron, I love salt.

I know you did.

Like you've seen me eat French fries like I'm salting and already very salty food.

It's not good or is it?

Or I guess we'll find out more next week.

No, I think it's I think it's not good.

I think it's bad.

But despite knowing this, despite knowing that it's probably not great, that I'm salting things and eating a lot of salt, I want more of it.

I feel like I need salt.

I crave salt, and it might occasionally be the case that I do actually need to replenish some salt, Like maybe I'm do a long run in the heat, or I'm working outside all day and I'm sweating out lots of salt.

But in general, nowadays we eat a whole lot more salt than we need to like make up for, right, Like we're able to make up the salt that we lose pretty easily.

Yeah, But what does enough salt mean?

Like, what does it mean in a biological sense?

I mean, and I'm not going to answer that question, but the answer does vary from person to person, I think in general, and there are guidelines that also help to determine what enough is.

These guidelines have, of course, undergone some shifts in the past few decades.

In his book Salt, a World History, author Mark Kurlanski writes that the average human contains about two hundred and fifty grams of salt, So that.

Statistic, right, which is enough to fill?

Just to visualize this, a couple a few standard sized salt.

Shakers, yeah, yeah, like the little ones you have on your dinner table salty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whenever we lose salt, which we're constantly doing through bodily functions like sweating or peeing, we need to consume more to replenish what we've lost.

If we don't, in extreme cases, we do run the risk of our bodies shutting down.

Basically, salt is essential for life, and when I say salt, I am referring to the dietary salt that we think of, mostly sodium chloride, the stuff that we consume, not salt is in like the broad chemical term for when an acid combines with a base.

I have like the same disclaimer episode too.

Like just I know someone's gonna be like, excuse me, salt is actually quite a broad term.

Yeah, I know, but I'm talking about salt, like talking about sodium sodium.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I also don't know how you would approach a history of like salt in the broad chemical sense.

I don't know.

You learned about ions and.

I guess sure, I mean, but to be honest, like, I'm also still grappling with how you approach a history of table salt like sodium chloride.

Salt because it has had and it continues to have, such a profound influence throughout so much of our species, evolutionary and written history.

Salt has held symbolic and religious significance.

It has shaped human settlement, It has led to revolutions, It has been used as a commodity, a currency, and as a medicine.

Salt has held the key to some nation's prosperity and the downfall of others.

It's some pretty powerful stuff.

Yeah, sounds like it, right.

But now, when you can saunter into any grocery store and pick up a jar of the stuff for pennies, you might not be awestruck by the wonder of salt.

In fact, you might instead be shopping for low sodium alternatives.

How can I get less of this stuff?

How can I avoid this?

Right?

But that would blow the minds of time travelers from almost any other point in history prior to the twentieth century.

Really, what do you mean you don't want salt in your food?

What do you mean salt is so cheap?

These days, we don't think twice about whether or not we'll have access to salt.

If anything, our primary concern when it comes to salt is how to eat less of it for our health.

That wasn't the case for most of human history.

One of the things that I love about microhistories is how they always make the case for like this thing, this subject, this invention, this incident, this one point in history holds the key to everything.

It explains everything.

But with salt, though, I'm like kind of convinced you buy it.

I'm buying it.

I'm buying it.

All animals need salt.

How much they need and where they get it from depends on the species.

Or the individual.

And next week, Arin, you'll do this the honor of talking about how much we humans need, maybe, which, as we'll see, is a very contentious issue, much more so than I realized.

But for now, I want to tell you where humans got salt and what we did with it, what we used to do with it.

Salt occurs naturally in all sorts of forms, right.

It's in salt water the ocean and seas, in salt springs, in salt deposits underground, like rock salt in the crusts of dried salty lakes.

We can consume or harvest salt directly from these sources, and we can also get salt from eating the things that also take in salt, like, for instance, animals.

Right, So, early humans got a good proportion of their salt from the wild game that they killed, including both like eating consuming the meat of animals and their blood like drinking the blood or using the blood to make other dishes exactly, yeah, or we got salt from fish or other marine life for those that were living closer to the coasts.

But as humans started to settle in larger groups and develop agriculture, diet shifted to include proportionally more grains and vegetables, which are generally speaking, much lower in salt than animal products.

Fortunately, domesticated livestock like sheep, pigs, and cattle fall close behind the development of agriculture, making them a handy, close by source of salt.

One paper I read suggested that livestock domestication was actually helped along because the wild ancestors of these animals were drawn to human settlements by the salt content of human urine.

They would be attracted to human settlements.

Interesting, right, So then it made it easier to domesticate them because they're like coming over anywhere anyway.

Maybe they're getting used to humans, you know, like yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know, and I don't know how you would like actually measure that in any capacity, but yeah, but it's a fun idea, yeah, and so and also I think it's like which animals would be drawn to that, So I mentioned earlier.

How some animals need more salt than others, or they vary in how they get it.

The general rule that I saw mentioned was that carnivores tend to get their salt from their prey because the bodies of animals contain lot more salt than like grasses and veggies and whatnot, and so herbivores will often supplement with naturally occurring sources of salt, like salt licks.

Here's my big reveal.

So I have the sweatshirt on.

Oh my god, stop, did you have like something covering it?

It's a little post it that's ramen.

It's like, yeah, instant ramen post it.

That's so good on so many levels.

Oh wait where their sweatshirts from?

So my sweatshirt is a place that I have taken you erin.

It is called.

Big Bone Lick State Historic Site.

We call it Big Bone Lick State Park.

Growing up Bone Baby Big Bone Lick.

So this is in northern Kentucky.

Yes, that is the actual name of it.

Yes, I am wrapping a sweatshirt that also has a wooly mammoth on it.

I wish you could see it better.

Your mic isn't exactly the wrong spot.

Can you see it now?

There?

It is chuck it out.

It's red, it is red, and it's It's called Big Bone Leake State Park because there are old salt licks that prehistoric megafauna used to come to for salt.

There are so many lots of fossils of things like mammoth, ground sloths, et cetera there, and it's known.

I'm like, it's so thrilling to talk about Big.

Bone State Park.

It's known as the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology because of all of these fossils.

That have been found there.

And it's funny too, a lot of the fossils that were found are actually reside in other countries because it was like in the seventeen hundreds and so and so they're all just being shipped out to other places eighteen hundreds.

But also it's I just have to mention it is in fairly close proximity to the Creation Museum, which I just find particularly a little you know, rich irony.

A little on the nose.

Yeah, it is.

But also at Big Bone Lick State Park State Historic Site, there is an annual salt festival that is held there.

I've only been once but I remember some of the salt making demonstrations.

It's really cool.

It happens around mid October if I remember correctly, So if you're in the area next year, you should definitely check it out.

Anyway, that's my little plug for State Park.

Yes, there's a put putt, the free put putt course.

We go there all the time.

Anyway, back to salt licks and animals and domestication, you can also see this happening now.

So for instance, if you here in Colorado, if you drive up to Mount Blue Sky, often the goats will come and to your cars and lick the salt off of your cars.

Interesting.

Yeah, and it's not like these these mountain goats are on their way to domestication, just that animals are drawn to salt, as are humans.

Many early human settlements were situated close to sources of salt, you know, salty springs, salty lakes, underground deposits of rock salt.

Archaeological evidence has actually been found at Big Bone Lick of early human habitation.

Some sources provided a steady supply of salt year round, while others were more subject to the whims of like climate and environment.

You can see this with like rising sea levels or falling sea levels like it changes the access to salt.

Salt, and so having access to a steady source became the primary motivator for salt extraction or mining or refining technologies which date back thousands of years to at least around three thousand BCE.

Yeah, and this is in ancient China mostly, And those cities or towns or settlements that over centuries had the salt and the technology to produce it, they were the ones that grew that often grew wealthy and powerful as they controlled this valuable commodity.

Why did we want so much salt?

Like, did we need it?

Why was it?

Why was it such a valuable commodity?

Why?

Right?

Right, Well, we didn't need it in a physiological sense, right at least as far as I could tell, we needed it because salt has an incredible superpower.

It can freeze time at the basic level.

Salt balances fluids, It shifts the amount of water from here to there.

And if you overload something like say a fish, with salt, that will suck the moisture out of the cells and prevent the growth of microbe since they can't survive in that super salty environment, and so salt is one of our earliest preservatives.

Why is this a superpower?

Okay, So pretend, if you will, that you live five thousand years ago and you make your living catching and selling fish.

So you go out, you cast your nets, you set your lines, whatever it is however you're catching fish, and then you boat back to shore to peddle your wares.

This is pre refrigeration, pre ice.

Your window for selling that fish is incredibly small, as is your potential customer base.

So if you happen to be selling out a day when everyone's got loads of fish, and you're like, well, you know, why would I buy yours over theirs?

I can't eat this much fish, you probably have to drop your prices to be competitive.

If you're able to sell at all, and if you don't sell anything that day, that means that your labor has been lost and you have to go out the next day and try again.

Your income, your livelihood, it depends on the whims of the local market.

It's a tenuous life to live.

But if you could freeze time, at least for the fish by adding some salt and slowing its decay, you become a whole lot less to high to the day to day shifts in the market.

In fact, you're not tied to your local market at all.

You could bring your salted fish on long journeys along trade routes, and your fish now has more value overall since it's loaded with this tasty and precious substance.

Nor are you tied to the seasonality of some foods.

So during those times of scarcity, like over winter, when catch is low and you've eaten through all the food that you've stored for those long months, now you have these frozen in time salted fish getting you and your family through.

It's amazing.

It's pretty incredible.

I mean, okay, so I have can I ask you a question?

Of course?

So, but this is like thousands and thousands of years ago, three thousand CE.

You said, three thousand BCE BC see the future, Yeah.

The future.

What before people figured out salt?

First of all, how did they figure it out?

Like?

How did how did they figure that out?

And also before that was there any like was it just you could smoke things?

Is that is that all they had?

Or yeah, actually that's a good question.

I don't know when smoking, like the relative timing of smoking versus salting but also, I mean smoking takes fuel right as well.

Yeah, the extraction of salts also can take a lot of fuel.

Okay, but yeah, what was your other question?

So I don't know about salting versus smoking.

You can't discover salts.

Yeah, I mean I don't know except for the fact that salt tastes good, right, So I would imagine it was sort of that, Yeah, that aspect of it.

Like there, do I have this quote here?

Yeah, there's a quote from ancient each from an old papyrus that reads, there is no better food than salted vegetables.

Huh.

I'm inclined to agree to agree with that.

Yeah, how interesting, Aaron.

It's so weird to think about, Like someone figured out, Hey, if I like boil this water, what's leftover is this stuff and it tastes really good.

Oh, by the way, also it makes my fish last longer, by the way, Now I've revolutionized the world.

Yeah right, I know.

And it was a trans truly transformative idea, especially in regions where climatic shifts shortened the growing or harvesting or hunting or fishing seasons.

Right, So I used fish as an example, and fish would become like the hugest commodity after the fourteenth century, with like salted herring and then later cod.

But salt was fundamental to the production of so many other foods, some of which had been salted for centuries.

Pickling like sauerkraut and other veg cheese, the salted fish sauce than mancient Rome called garum misopei soy sauce.

Cheese, butter our dairy products used to contain a lot more salt.

So there was a recipe from the fourteenth century for butter that called for one pound of salt for every ten pounds of butter.

Whoa, that's salty butter.

I know, I would have loved it.

It would be so good spread on some toast and sour.

Out perfection, bacon, ham, olives.

I mean, there are so many things that salt has been added to that helps prolong it shelf life.

Right.

Salami comes from the word for salted, as does salad.

Salad.

Yeah, I think it's like, yeah salted, that's hilarious.

So it's like so many things, yeah, salt, food, food and salts.

Yeah.

Wow, it's easy to love salt.

I think this shows how easy it is to love salt.

The number of things that it was added to, and not just for taste, but also for practical purposes, for longevity of the foods.

And this utility and love of salt created a tremendous commercial opportunity.

Cities that were close to sources of salt, or those that produced lots of salted foods grew wealthy on the trade that they conducted, and as a result, global trade overall grew enormously.

Salt was used for a whole lot more than just salt curing or even just like adding some seasoning to your meal.

It was used to cure leather, clean chimneys, to solder pipes, glaze pottery, and as a medicine for all sorts of ailments.

But it was really by reducing seasonal dependence on foods that salt made its mark on human civilizations.

I don't call it a superpower.

Lightly like salt was also held in great importance by many cultures.

I think because of the power that it held, it represented purity, incorruptibility, immortality, loyalty, durability, hospitality like you better make sure that you have a salt cellar on the table when you have guests over Some of these salt sellers too, like historically are just so intricate and beautiful.

The Romans actually held salt in such importance that they salt had to be on the table before any other dish was placed there.

Ah.

Yeah.

It's used in many different religions, offerings, and rituals.

It was linked to arousal and passion and creativity.

It was thought to be important for fertility.

It was the essence of life.

So think of the phrase salt of the earth.

According to the that's what Jesus said to his disciples.

You are the salt of the earth, the best of the human race.

Right, pretty big deal, salts of the earth.

It was used to protect from harm.

You know, Sprinkle a newborn baby with salt is what you're supposed to do.

Sprinkle your herd of cows, carry a little bag of salt around your neck to ward off evil.

Or if you've watched the show Supernatural, there's always a bag of salt.

Saltar demons, yep, protect against demons, make your witches circles.

And so to spill salt was considered a bad omen.

I mean, you know, you're supposed to like throw a little bit of salt.

Over your left shoulder.

That would that was like, that's the least extreme response to a little bit of spilled salt.

There are some places where it was like, no, then you do that, and you have to crawl under the table and then do that again, Like it's like this whole step mm hmm.

Interesting, And that, like spilling salt being bad luck, goes back century.

In da Vinci's Last Supper, there's a bit of spilt salt in front of judas a scariot, indicating that like this isn't that wild?

I saw that salt.

Salt.

Yeah, spilling salt could signify the end of a friendship, or at least a quarrel.

Oh, friendship was forged in salt.

Homer called it a divine substance.

Plato said that it was quote especially dear to the gods.

Plutarch wrote that without salt, practically nothing is eatable.

Salt is added even to bread and enriches its flavor.

Beyond that, salty food aids digestion, and it makes any food tender.

And how interesting Aaron.

I know, I'm thinking about all of this in the context of what I'm going to talk about next week, and it just makes it so interesting.

It's quite the rebranding of salt what we've experienced, and especially the last fifty years or so.

Right, yeah, right, right, right right.

I mean a Pliny went so far as to say that quote A civilized life is impossible without salt.

And civilized life life is impossible impossible without salt.

Is it any wonder then, that those who held the salt held the power.

Salt itself was not necessarily rare, right, it was never held as more important or equally valuable as gold, for example.

That's sort of like a I don't know what you call an urban legend.

That's like a historical urban legend, myth maybe.

Yeah, that's and I don't know, I think might be right.

I have heard that, so I know what you mean by that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was just that it wasn't evenly distributed across a region, and it required labor to extract and to move, and so you had to like spend some It wasn't hard to get.

It was just it wasn't hard to get in the sense that it was rare.

It was hard to get in the sense that it required labor.

Yeah, And so those who were positioned to transport or produce salt benefited enormously from the taxes enforced on moving huge amounts of the stuff or of salted foods.

So in ancient Rome, some of the first great roads were built for salt transportation purposes.

Via Solaria is one of these.

It means salt road salaria.

Ancient Rome also had a treasury position whose job it was to make decisions about salt prices.

Salt occasionally seems to have been used as currency, although not as much as is often suggested.

It's another myth.

And while the often repeated bit of trivia that Roman soldiers were paid in salt is not true.

They were not paid in salt.

They were paid in money.

The word salary does come from this period, meaning someone paid an allowance to buy salt.

So like if you were paid a salary, it was like, here's your allowance to buy salt.

Like that is sort of where that comes.

We're not paying you in salt, but we're paying you so you can go buy your salt.

Yeah, exactly, Yeah, get your own salt.

Yeah, get your own salt.

You know that phrase, not worth his salt, meaning someone is not worth what you're paying them.

Oh, that's so interesting, Aaron, Yeah, yeah, I mean there are salts.

There are So this is what I'm saying, Like, you are equipped now for trivia.

You You're welcome more salt sayings, or at least one more take it with a grain of salt, you know, meaning with a healthy dose of skepticism.

That seems to have originated from a recipe for an antidote by planning the elder who he listed a bunch of things like Okay, so you're grinding together walnuts and figs and rue add a grain of salt, and that was thought to maybe like a digestion, and so over time that kind of evolved into its current use.

People think maybe it's to like.

A digestion of difficult ideas interesting.

I don't know.

I don't know if that's I feel like some of the salt lore is kind of like whatever you want it to be, right, and so that's what I want it to be.

But I like that because I feel like otherwise, when you think about it, you're like, why does this phrase not seem to fit with the rest of the salt phrases right to the grain of the yeah aah yeah, because it's like, oh, I'm not I don't really believe that, so like take it with a grain of salt.

So it's like, if it's more to age your digestion, di of this difficult idea, Yeah, let's go with it.

We'll go with it.

Rubbing salt in the wound, for instance.

That goes back to the days when salt was sometimes used as a not very effective and extremely painful antiseptic.

So it would be like, apply some salt to that wound.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Back to the salt mines, meaning having to return to grueling or unpleasant work.

That phrase originated in the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds in Russia, when prisoners were often sent to Siberia to work in the salt mines.

But I mean salt mines were intense places.

So here's a quote from fifteen fifty five about salt mines in Poland.

Quote, there are mountains in which the salt goes down very deep.

Here on the fifth of January fifteen twenty eight, I climbed down fifty ladders in order to see for myself, and there in the depths observed workers naked because of the heat, using iron tools to dig out a most valuable horde of salt from these inexhaustible mines as if it had been gold and silver end quote.

Yeah, down there you're so high or naked, yeah, and you're having to chip away salt like brutal.

Yeah.

So these were deeply unpleasant places to work, I would imagine, and often, you know, the ones who were working there were prisoners or enslaved.

People were forced to work there as punishment.

Okay, So generally speaking, there are two main sources of salt for easy extraction, salt that's been dissolved in water like seawater or salty springs, and then there's rock salt, which exists kind of like from that quote and deposits underground.

You can get rock salt out of the earth by mining, and you can get salt out of water by either boiling off the water leaving salt crystals behind, which used a tremendous amount of fuel.

Forests had been devastated in this process.

Imagine like you can't you know, just to.

Get fuel to burn for to make salt.

Yeah, I mean.

And also it wasn't like the getting salt was the only reason for devastation of forests, but like it helps be contributed yeah, yeah, or there's evaporation, which has the same end result, it just takes a whole lot longer and requires certain circumstances.

Right, And that is literally the most like surface level explanation of salt production.

And that's all I'm going to give you fair I have.

Though, Actually it's so funny, like some of the memories that emerge, Like I was like, oh my gosh, I've been to the salt festival, and I've been to a salt extraction site, historical one in Peru at the salt mines of Maras, and it's like, yeah, it goes back hundreds of years at least, and it was really fascinating to see these like tears of salt wells all fed by like a salty underground spring.

And then there's like they're harvested.

I had for a while, like a little baggy of salt from Did you eat it?

I did at some point, and then I don't know what happened to it.

I lost it in the move, like one of my thousands of moves.

Yeah, and then there are also there are lots of other steps and aspects to the extraction or production of salt, you know, things like purification, the different types of salt the origins.

Some are more prize than others, some are considered crude or adulterated, or.

Like just gross.

Salt production was so central to some towns and cities that they took their name from the presence of salt mines.

Salzburg in Austria meaning roughly salt settlement, salt Coats in Scotland, Saltville in Virginia, Hall and Germany.

Many towns in England ending with which like Middlewich, Northwich, Sandwich, salt like which is often which is from what I could tell, which is often tied to like the like artisan production like there were like goods that were made there.

But a lot of witch's towns that end in which are were like salt towns.

They were salt towns.

Interesting.

Salt production was extremely profitable, as was its transport.

In two thousand BCE, the Chinese government became the first to basically create a salt monopoly and to use it to become extremely prosperous, putting taxes on both domestically produced as well as imported salt.

And it would be like I mean, it would be we can make salt for this amount, We'll charge ten times that like that kind of thing, and thousands of years later, Venice did the same thing, first as a producer of salt and then by controlling commerce and supplying it to much of southern Europe.

The Venetians themselves described salt as quote unquote the true foundation of our state.

Okay, right, It was like salt.

Made Venice in many ways.

And while salt could make a region prosperous like Venice, in other cases such strict control over the stuff could lead to unrest.

France had long had a salt tax since the thirteenth century, and man, people hated this tax.

First of all, it was really unevenly applied and this like there could probably be a textbook written about this salt tax.

But it was really unevenly applied, and so some regions were exempt while others weren't.

Second, it was kind of a flat tax, so that people were forced to maybe buy a certain amount of salt even if they didn't need all of it, and pay taxes on it regardless of.

How much they made.

And so it was kind of this like unfair tax because everyone had to pay a certain amount, Okay, if that makes sense.

Yeah, and salt was really expensive, so like the when people had to buy that, you know, the amount of that set amount of salt were required to that would be about one eighth of a peasant's yearly income.

And it was like locally very expensive or like within France, so it was that was ten times more than a cost just across the border.

And so salt smuggling became a huge thing.

Sounds like healthcare in the US.

Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.

And so yeah, people would go across border and smuggle salt back because they're like, I don't want to buy salt here, it's way too expensive.

And then there were like designated salt police who had the right to enter houses to search for smuggled salt based on their own suspicion.

Entire salt police.

I mean, they probably did more.

Things, but I imagine that all they did was salt.

Same same.

Yeah.

Again, there is like so much more to the salt to salt tax, but it like it's so intense that the Catholic Church even sided with the French government, adding a treatise in sixteen seventy four that stated, quote for all Christians, smuggling of salt is a mortal sin id quote.

It's ridiculous.

If you were caught, it could mean death.

Every year, thousands of people were arrested for salt smuggling and either put in the galleys, forced to do labor, or they were hanged.

What isn't this ridiculous?

Yeah, one paper I read estimated that the last year before the French Revolution, thirty five hundred citizens were sentenced to death or the galleys for salt smuggling and so salt.

Because of all of this ridiculousness around salt, it became a symbol of the injustices of the government of the monarchy.

And so it has been suggested that salt was a contributing factor to the uprising leading to the French Revolution.

Wow, not just the cake thing.

Not just the cake.

Don't let them eat salt, don't let make the cake no salt?

Yep, how interesting?

Erin isn't that wild?

And it's like probably aspects of that have been exaggerated, but that is what Like, I have citations for these myths, right, But that's not the only revolution where salt has featured prominently.

The oppressive British tax and monopoly on salt in India led Gandhi to March to the Sea in nineteen thirty in an act of civil disobedience, and eventually this helped pave the way for Indian independence, ending British colonial rule.

So you know, I love it.

I mean, given all of this, it is really strange to think about this thing that we probably all take for granted.

Salt has something that created empires and cited revolution, was integral in religious ceremonies, and held such important meaning for thousands of years.

Salt was a big deal.

From the time of its first widespread production five thousand years ago to the Industrial Revolution, salt was, if not king, at least one of the major players in shaping human history.

And over that time salt intake went from not very much at all.

This is worthy of a larger discussion, but one book estimated that our paleolithic ants sesters consumed less than one gram of salt per day.

Today, what is it like eight and a half grams on average per day ten ten Okay, I saw eight and a half somewhere.

But yeah, dietary or like nutritional epidemiology is a challenge.

But we went from not very much to orders of magnitude more and as we added more and more salted foods to our diet.

Our salt consumption skyrocketed some regions that ate a lot of salted fish, like people in Sweden in the sixteenth century, for example, our estimated can't this does not seem right to me, But I read it somewhere are estimated to have eaten around one hundred grams per day, so that it seems.

It seems impossible.

Like maybe maybe that's if you're looking at just the straight salted fish.

But if the salt was rinsed off, or if the fish were soaked and so like, I can't it being.

That would be so salty.

I know it hurts my mouth thinking about it, like dry like salt about it.

Yeah.

But in the book Salt, Kurlansky says that Europeans in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries were taking in about forty to seventy grams per day.

But I've also seen lower estimates around like eighteen grams.

Okay, that's so interesting, Aaron, because I was going to ask you if if there were any espect because I couldn't find any estimates from like, you know, the last few hundred years.

Oh, this is all just such good fodder for its fodder.

Uh but this is Yeah, so if even if it's at the lower end of the estimate, like eighteen grams, let's say it's twenty grams, that's still double what the average American consumes today, which is actually, uh double.

Than what is recommended.

And so we are doing a lot better nowadays, Like even though we're told that we're not, we are doing a lot better now than we were a few hundred years go.

Why did salt intake go down?

It's not because of health concerns.

Let me just get that out of the way.

It was because of refrigeration.

Oh, that totally makes sense, right, It blew my mind.

Yeah, so everything was way way so okay, there.

Was let me just yeah recap us.

So back in the day, like when we humans evolved into humans and started doing agriculture and all of that, initially we were consuming a minimal amount of salt.

We weren't adding salt to our things.

We were getting salt just from the places, like animals and salt if it was there, et cetera.

For most of human history, we consumed very little salt, is what it seems.

Yeah, then we figured out whoa, you can use salt to make things last a lot longer.

So we started eating crep tons of it, tons of it, so an unbelievable amount.

Then we invented the refrigerator, and we're like, cool, we don't need as much salt.

There you think, there you go, and now we are today, and now we are.

Here today, it's still eating salt because salt tastes good.

I mean, that's like, that's the other thing is that like, and I know that you're going to get a little bit into the sort of the evolution the salt cravings and stuff like that, but there's a difference between tasting good and like needing salt for cocked but it is.

It seems like it has been suggested that because that we think of salt like taste, salt tastes good to us.

That's an adaptive trait because we would have needed more salt historically, I think, or we would have been maybe more on the.

Edge and the tenuousness of it because we are omnivores, whereas like carnivores don't really have salt.

We will talk more about it next week, but yeah, it's a there are reasons why salt tastes so good to yus.

Yeah, and there are reasons also, I mean, there are reasons that salt tastes good and so therefore removing salt from foods, even though it's better for our health, makes people not want to eat those foods, which means that the salt industry doesn't want us doesn't want to remove the salt from foods.

Anyway, we'll get to that next week too.

But also I'm just putting in a plug now for a book Club episode that's coming out later this season, all about the history of refrigeration.

It is fascinating.

It's called Frostbite by Nicolotwilly and so stay tuned for that.

But yeah, it wasn't just refrigeration.

There was also canning.

So there were just alternatives to salt when it came to long term storage or transport renovation.

Yeah, at the same time, the industrial revolution had made salt extraction much simpler using updated technologies and fuel, and so you have the simultaneous like drop and demand just as it had become easier to produce.

So that explains in part why it's so cheap today.

I mean, this was quite the fall from grace for salt to go from this like esteemed substance without which civilized life is not possible or whatever.

Pliny said to We don't need you anymore.

You're not welcome here.

Maybe bad for.

Me, Yeah, it's kind of hurt.

That's like, that's quite a transformation.

Salt is just like, oh.

And then the death blow is about to come.

Things were about to get a whole lot worse for NaCl.

The salt Wars were about to begin.

Tell me, yeah, I mean this is what you're gonna tell me about.

Oh I thought it wasn't real war.

No, no, no, no, I mean it's just like.

I also don't know if it's just for the early part of the debate about salt or like, also if salt wars can be applied to the discussions that have been happening over the last few decades.

But anyway, I'll tell you.

In the late eighteen hundreds, when salt consumption began to decline, salt had a very different reputation than it does today.

Rather than being seen as a contributing factor to cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and other health issues, it was avoidance of salt that was thought to.

Be bad for your health.

Interesting what changed?

It started with a trickle of papers suggesting that salt maybe wasn't as healthful as previously thought.

In eighteen ninety nine, a couple of researchers put forth the idea that salt pulled water from your tissues, increasing plasma volume and water retention.

And then a researcher named Atchard in nineteen oh one suggested that salt consumption led to the edema of Bright's disease, which is chronic inflammation of the kidneys, and possibly a whole host of other conditions.

And then in nineteen oh four is kind of really when the salt, not really the tides began to turn, but it was like this was the sticking idea.

Two French scientists Ambard and Boujard published their hypothesis that high salt intake led to hypertension nineteen oh four, and this kicked off what would become known as the salt wars.

Side note, though these two scientists were not the first to suggest the salt blood pressure hypothesis or sodium blood pressure.

In fact, several thousand years before, around twenty six hundred BCE, an ancient Chinese medical text warns of the relationship between salt and hypertension.

Interesting quote, If.

Too much salt is used in blood, the pulse hardens end quote.

Isn't that fascinating?

It is really fascinating.

It was like someone said it way back when.

But they're like, yeah, that's fine though, Yeah, we're all dying from infectious disease well before hypertension becomes a problem.

I mean that's probably a big part of it too.

They're like, well, just never got it, never caught up with you, right, Yeah, But thousands of years later, we're still fighting about this.

Right after the paper by Ambard and other researchers attempted to replicate their findings.

Essentially, what these two had done was feed six patients with hypertension varying amounts of salt and found that those who were on lower sodium diets had a reduction in blood pressure.

But the replication part of this was tricky.

There they often didn't include controls.

The first study by Ambard and Bouchard did not.

The results were not very clear cut and was like for some maybe it did something, for others it didn't, you know, And it didn't specifically implicate salt, and only salt in the blood pressure changes that they observed.

Because it was like a whole dietary shift.

So it was like, was it less salt or was it also that you're eating more rice?

Or you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, yeah, such a good question.

Some scientists did observe a reduction in blood pressure with declining levels of sodium, while others saw no difference whatsoever, and so it was like kind of all over the place.

By the mid twentieth century, the consensus was a weak one.

Yeah, yes, low salt diets did seem to improve blood pressure, but only in a subset of people.

Add on to this the fact that low salt diets are not tasty when you've been used to eating loads of salt, and people were not keen on the idea of limiting salt as a way to treat high blood pressure.

But some researchers kept on looking because if salt reduction can be helpful, like how and why this could save lives?

And so the second half of the twentieth century saw a ton of studies much more carefully designed, carried out on the relationship between sodium intake and hypertension, and as with their earlier research, the results were mixed and the message became complicated, not easily communicated within a headline, because whoever actually reads like.

The body of text in an article.

The nuance surrounding any aspect of nutrition and health is huge, and salt is no exception.

There are industry groups like the Salt Institute also through their hat and their consultants, sometimes physicians or academic into the mix, which further muddied the waters.

And after years of back and forth and well technically and commentaries on articles and replies to those commentaries, it seems that we now have maybe a clearer picture on the relationship between sodium and hypertension.

Maybe not.

I'll let you tell us next week.

Okay, I can't wait too.

That was such a good setup, Aaron.

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Salt salts.

Yeah, I am thrilled to keep going with this me too, because yeah, that was just such a good way to set up, especially this idea that like thousands of years ago, we were consuming minimal salt many thousands of years ago.

Yes, then for potentially thousands of years we were consuming so much salt.

And now where are we at today?

I can't wait to say are we Oh?

It's so exciting and there is like this was.

There is so much to the history of salt.

You could read whole books on recipes with salt.

I mean there really that the Kurlansky Salt Book just is mostly recipes that I feel like is what it ended up being.

It's it's a really interesting I just love the history of food too, I think, is what I'm realizing.

Yeah, but yeah.

But if you would like to learn more about salt, I've got some sources for you.

So I don't know if I would give the Salt Book a resounding recommendation.

I actually found it like not very well organized and so a little bit disappointing in that regard.

But there are lots of other papers about salt.

There was one by I think it was called bo Cirillo from nineteen ninety four, a History of Salt block from nineteen seventy six Salt in Human History there, and then if you want to learn about the origins of the Salt Wars, there's one by de nicol Antonio and O'Keefe from twenty seventeen called the History of the Salt Wars, and just a whole bunch more that I will post on the website this podcast.

Yeah, yeah, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.

Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Brent and Pete and Jessica and everyone else I'd exactly right Network for making all this possible.

Yeah, and thanks to you listeners for listening.

Tell us what you think about salts.

Do you have any fun salt facts to share?

And make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss next week's episode.

Oh yeah, yeah, because that's where the meat of it really is.

No, so this was meat, no salted meat, betam.

This was the seasoning.

Next week is the substance.

And a special thank you also to our patrons.

Thank you so so much for your support.

It really does mean the world to us.

Well, until next time, wash your hands, you filthy animals.