Salt

From the dawn of civilisation to empires and revolutions

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Nelson Mandela

Salt has been a valuable commodity since the dawn of civilisation, but even this truism is underselling its significance. It may now be abundant, but it was once a rare and highly-valued resource. Wars have been fought over salt, magic spells have fended off evil with the use of salt and it has raised great empires and then brought them crashing back down to earth, rubbing salt into their wounds. The universality of salt may also be why the word remains so close to its reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form *sal in so many modern languages: German Salz, Russian соль (sol’), French sel etc. In Proto-Greek /s/ shifted to [h] (in a regular sound change called debuccalisation, whereby the original place of articulation of a consonant moves to the glottis, becoming [h] or a glottal stop). This meant that *sal became Proto-Greek ᾰ̔́λς (hals), the source of the coinage halogen, literally ‘salt producer’, apt as this group of highly reactive, non-metallic elements – fluorine, bromine, chlorine, iodine etc. – combine with sodium to produce salts with similar properties, including sodium chloride, aka common salt (also known as halite in its naturally-occurring form).

The oldest city in Europe, dating from around 5400 BCE, is believed to be Solnitsata in Bulgaria. Solnitsata ‘the salt works’, was a walled stone settlement centred around a salt mine, which provided salt for much of the Balkan peninsula. Archaeological research testifies to this mineral’s importance at sites throughout the world. For example, the Proto-Celtic-speaking Hallstatt culture (c.1200 BCE – 400 BCE), which was the predominant archaeological culture of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Western and Central Europe, owed its pre-eminence to salt. At a time when human societies were almost exclusively based on agriculture, the community at Hallstatt (now in Upper Austria) was exploiting the salt mines in the area. This activity allowed their culture to flourish: grave goods attest to trading links across the Mediterranean and as far north as Britain and the Baltic Sea. After the collapse of the Hallstatt culture, salt continued to play a pivotal role in the economy of the region. The Romans established a salt evaporation pond there, and numerous salt mines were subsequently created. The Habsburgs designated the Hallstatt area Salzkammergut ‘salt domain’, and the fact that the principal river of the region is the Salzach ‘salt river’ and its main city is Salzburg ‘salt mountain’ tells its own story.

The word salary came to English via Anglo-Norman salarie from Latin salarium ‘wages’. Salarium is the neuter form of the adjective salarius ‘related to salt’, but the theory that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt should be taken with a pinch of salt (Latin cum grano salis), as this has not been attested in sources from the period. Salarium may be an abbreviated form of salarium argentum ‘salt money’, in which case it is more feasible that a salary would be ‘money used to purchase salt’ (and presumably, other household goods) than ‘money in the form of salt’. Whatever the origin, if you aren’t worth your salt, then you aren’t deemed capable or trustworthy, so you don’t merit the salt (or salary) that has been accorded to you. The Romans are indisputably responsible for salad – by seasoning herbs and vegetables with brine, they could make them last longer – herba salata ‘salted vegetables’ was abbreviated to salata, borrowed by French as salade and then imported to English in the medieval period.

The Romans also have a salty goddess in Salacia, the female deity of the sea and consort of the god Neptune. Her name is derived from Latin sal and means ‘the salty one’. Neptune had long had the beautiful Salacia in his sights and decided to kidnap her. However, Salacia was a timid nymph and was also quite keen to preserve her virginity, so she fled and hid from him in the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The heartbroken Neptune sent a dolphin to look for her and the silver-tongued intermediary managed to persuade her to return and become his wife. Neptune was so grateful that he placed the dolphin in the heavens as the constellation Delphinus, which, with the best will in the world, looks a lot more like an upside-down kite than a dolphin. Despite appearances, salacious is not related to Salacia, but is derived from a different Latin root, salax ‘lustful’ from salire ‘to leap’. Apparently, this is with reference to the way sexually-aroused male animals jump upon female animals – Neptune’s kidnapping of Salacia is with salacious intent, Salacia is very shy and retiring, in comparison.

Classical Latin salsus ‘salted’ produced French sauce and Italian and Spanish salsa, both of which were eventually borrowed by English. The earliest recorded sauces are especially salty condiments, for example, garum, a fermented fish sauce used by the Romans and doubanjiang, a fermented paste made of soybeans, broad beans, chilli peppers, flour and salt. Doubanjiang remains popular, particularly in Sichuan cuisine, and it has certainly stood the test of time. It is mentioned in very early Chinese texts, such as Rites of Zhou, a work from the 2nd century BCE considered one of the classic works of Confucianism. The secondary meaning of sauce as ‘something that adds piquancy to a dish’ is responsible for saucy in the senses ‘impertinent, cheeky’ and ‘sexually suggestive’, while a variant pronunciation of sauce as sass gives us sassy and even more impudence and presumption. The high salt content of sauces had the dual function of adding flavour and acting as a preservative and this is also true for salami < Italian salami < Latin salare ‘to salt’ and sausage < Old Northern French saussiche < late Latin salsicia ‘prepared by salting’, also the source of the Spanish and Portuguese salchicha and Italian salsiccia – good sausages all.

Salting the earth is the ancient wartime practice of scattering salt around the lands of a defeated enemy to stop crops growing and the inhabitants reestablishing themselves there. This ritual originated in the ancient Near East, appearing in the Book of Judges (9:45), in which King Abimelech slays all of the people of the city, razes it to the ground and then salts the land for good measure. On the other hand, the phrase salt of the earth, denoting people of great worth, also comes from the bible: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his 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.’ (Matthew 5:13). So, while salt tastes salty it has vigour and merits respect, but once it fades, and loses what Shakespeare praises as the salt of youth, it is a has-been. (Fresh) salt was deemed a necessary staple for every meal and some people still believe that spilling salt brings misfortune: this superstition features most famously in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot is depicted next to an upturned salt cellar that he has knocked over with his elbow. The only way bad luck can be countered is by picking up the spilt salt and throwing it over your left shoulder – left because it is the side of ill omen where the devil lurks. Salt also used to indicate your position in the pecking order. When the great and the good were seated around a long table, a large salt cellar would be placed in the middle of the table. If you were above the salt, you were in a position of honour, but if you were below the salt, you were among the riffraff.

Last but not least, let’s turn to salt’s place in conflict and insurrection. In 1304, Venice waged a successful war against Padua in the guerra del sale ‘Salt War’, preventing the Paduans from developing salt pans near their common frontier, which would have threatened their salt monopoly. The American Revolution is well known for the colonists’ refusal to pay a tea tax, and the Boston Tea Party of 1773 with its famous rallying cry of ‘no taxation without representation’. However, the tax on tea was also accompanied by a tax on salt, an essential product for American fisheries, which exported salted fish. When the colonists rebelled against the tax laws, the British imposed an embargo on the export of salt to the colonies in response – another link in the chain of events that led from civil disobedience to revolution and independence. Similarly, popular resistance to France’s version of the salt tax, the hated gabelle (from Italian gabella ‘tax, duty’ and ultimately Arabic  قَبَالَة (qabāla) ‘guaranty, liability’), is recognised as one of the causes of the French Revolution. By 1789, 3,000 French citizens a year – men, women and children – were being sent to prison or the galleys or even executed for salt smuggling and other contraventions of the gabelle, contributing to the people’s disillusionment with the ancien régime. Most famous of all, though, is the Salt Satyagraha protest (satyagraha means ‘holding firm to truth’ or ‘truth-force’) led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, in which he inspired tens of thousands of his compatriots to make and sell their own salt from the sea. This was an effective means of bypassing the British monopoly on salt production in India and its partner in crime, the colonial salt tax. This strategy of non-cooperation and civil disobedience fostered further acts of non-violent resistance and eventually led to Indian independence. It was almost as if the British hadn’t learnt any lessons from history – but then, as current affairs repeatedly show us, they aren’t alone in that. Anyway, I’ll stop assaulting you with this word salad and get my coat.