Salt Pans / Salterns

Salt is an essential element in the diet of man and was once a very valuable commodity. In the long age before the invention of the refrigerator, meat and fish could only be preserved by salting them.

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Without access to salt, people had to eat their meat as soon as it was slaughtered. This made survival through the winter months a perilous thing for a people who had switched from hunting to farming; it meant that they had to gather in enough food not only for themselves but also for their livestock. With access to salt, farmers were able to slaughter the greater part of their livestock at the end of the summer, retaining only the breeding stock. The value attached to salt is made plain by in old adage, whereby we decide whether a person is "worth his salt". Roman soldiers were evidently considered to be worth theirs: they actually used to be paid a regular ration - their "salary".

The art of acquiring salt from salt water was learnt, by man, at approximately the same time as the discovery of underground veins of salt. Thus mining and salt-panning commenced in the same era (the Bronze Age) but in completely different locations.

The extraction of salt from sea water requires heat, and in temperate climates that heat had to be applied artificially: having been left lying in the pans during the summer months, the water was subsequently boiled. This process is no longer economically viable, and it is only in the warmer parts of the world, where the evaporation of the water occurs naturally, that the manufacture of sea salt continues.


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