Saturday, July 7, 2012

Salt

As I ate my gourmet luxurious breakfast this morning in ease and comfort with the nice air-conditioning and pleasant company, I meditated on how lucky we are as compared to our ancestors, both recent and remote. Our distant ancestors did not have A/C, nor electricity, nor half the foods we take for granted, nor, in some cases, salt.

Imagining meals without salt led me to think about how salt is produced. Today most is mined simply because mining and transportation has increased vastly in efficiency, but there is nothing wrong with evaporating sea water, and in fact gourmands prefer sea salt for various reasons. I pondered why our ancestors did not evaporate sea water, since England is surrounded by coastline and Western Europe certainly is not landlocked.

All that is required to evaporate sea water is a pan, preferably of dark wood to absorb rather than reflect the sunlight. The Sun will do the rest. So, why did our ancestors not manufacture their own salt, instead of paying exorbitant fees to merchants? Why was salt considered a luxury in the old days? The only conclusion I could reach was that our ancestors were mostly ignorant of the process of evaporation. That led to a feeling of smugness, which is always a mistake. I asked myself, would I have discovered evaporation if my teacher had not taught me about it in the third grade? I'm not so sure it is quite so obvious to most people.

Another complication is that coastlines tend to have more rain, which would interfere with any large-scale evaporation scheme. Also, standing water can fall prey to parasites and contamination, which ancient people might not know how to counter in an effective manner. A few cases of sickness would be enough to dissuade people from using evaporation.

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