Imagine holding a substance so precious it could buy you freedom or spark wars. It wasn’t gold, nor jewels, but something far more fundamental to life: salt. Today, it’s ubiquitous and cheap, but rewind history, and you’ll find salt was a luxury, a commodity so valuable its worth rivaled precious metals.
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Difficulty in Harvesting
Prior to industrialization, it was extremely expensive and labor-intensive to harvest the mass quantities of salt necessary for seasoning and food preservation.
This made salt an extremely valuable commodity. Entire economies were based on salt production and trade. For example, in the Roman Empire, salt was used to pay its legionaries, which is the origin of the word salary.
Government Control and Scarcity
Salt trade was entirely controlled by the government in ancient times. Its production was legally restricted, and by doing so, ancient governments would have the ability to create a salt shortage, therefore keeping its value high.