Why was salt so expensive?

[JoanDrake]

This is a purely historical question but the answer(s) are important to a WIP, so I think it might be seen as legitimate research.

Why was salt so expensive (equivalent to gold measured by weight in some eras, according to much of my info) in the ancient and medieval worlds?
In the modern world it seems both amazingly widespread and easy to get to. While it must usually be mined, admittedly, mining, and the mining of salt, was certainly not an unknown technology in antiquity. Obtaining salt from the sea, also, is certainly not a new process and was available to anyone who had a seashore.

So why did it cost so much? What is so different about modernity and medievalism that made salt a precious commodity? Is it simple mechanization, like with cotton? That seems most obvious to me but I have never heard it said and one has to wonder why the industrial revolution didn't happen much sooner if that is so; as salt was wanted by everyone and available from everywhere while cotton was not really either widely known to exist nor universally desired.

 

[Bowler1]

Transport, or lack of comes to mind. Salt is a rock/mineral and it can't be that light to carry. This would have increased the price.

Getting salt from sea water is still a long time conusming process. Using just the sun for power in the past can't have been all that efficent, and of almost no use in Britian or other wet countries I'd imagine. So not it's not just having a sea shore, but dry weather as well.

Salt pans and other open and freely available sources of salt are not that common, I guess.

I've attached a link, but my quick surf of the internet does not really answer your question, just when or how did salt become cheap!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_salt

Such a simple question, the answer is bound to be a long winded affair - but apart from some silly guess work it's beyond me.

 

[The Judge]

I suspect because it was needed. Salt was one of the major ways of preserving food, and as a consequence was vital. And although there are certainly salt mines all over Europe, they're not on everyone's doorstep, so the laws of supply and demand mean the price is pushed up. Add to that the difficulty of extracting, the cost of transport, mine-owners reducing output/stockpiling to increase cost, lords and churches putting taxes on it, and wham, very expensive bits of white crystal.

Price falls when something is no longer needed/desired, or when alternative (especially cheaper) sources are found.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It was also a political thing -- used for taxation and what not, so a privlege that wasn't wanted to be shared, if you like.

 

[ratsy]

Yeah I agree with Springs on this. I think that a couple countries would have held the majority of salt so they could inflate the value and cost. Oddly enough this still happens. I am a purchaser for a maintenance supply company and China has the only mines for some rare earth minerals used in fluorescent lighting. They closed a couple of mines to increase the rarity thus driving the price up. Cost of the product skyrocketed.

I would assume (with no actual research ) that this would be a similar idea, or could be altered to be.

 

[Glisterspeck]

The siege in my WIP, The Siege of Gernrik, is part of a resource war over salt. I found this book both amazingly helpful and an entertaining read. Not sure how central salt is to your story, but if it is, I'd pick it up.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0142001619/?tag=brite-21

 

[Kissmequick]

Transport, or lack of comes to mind. Salt is a rock/mineral and it can't be that light to carry. This would have increased the price.

I should think there's the problem of it getting wet on its travels to take into account as well...

 

[anivid]

Concur with TJ, where to day we should take care of how much salt we add to foods, earlier it was a means of preservation - what else did they have for that purpose ?? - the freezers were in the polar areas or restricted to wintertimes, and the sugars were for compots/fruits - definitely not for meats and things - anybody tried that ?? - sugar on meats ??
(well, what is called "cured meat" today actually is cured with a a little bit of sugar in the curing liquid )

 

[Kissmequick]

You could use (and peopel did) lye or birch ash. Or you could bury it, pickle it in vinegar, smoke it, ferment it (with certain foods anyway).

Or at your most basic, you can dry meat

However, salted meat tastes bloody good, so I suspect that had a hand in starting off the trend. It's probably also easier to obtain than gold, and once it started getting used as currency...

ETA: On further thought, salt is kind of essential to the human body as well.

 

[Biskit]

A few interesting links on salt and taxation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_tax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Riot

http://saltassociation.co.uk/salt-the-facts/salt-history/

 

[sknox]

Why do you say it was so expensive? Do you have prices?

I ask because, AFAIK, salt was purchased by just about everyone. So how expensive could it be? *Pepper* was expensive. Gold was expensive. I don't see salt being in the same price point.

 

[Glisterspeck]

It depends on the time period, but salt was a scarce resource required, if not absolutely then practically, by everyone for everything from food preservation to religious ceremony. The demand drove the cost, and as Ratsy said, those who controlled the supply, could manipulate the price. Kind of like the De Beers Group and diamonds.

 

[chrispenycate]

Salt in rock is fairly low concentration, rarely thick layers where an ancient salt pan has been buried. They used to carry the broken up rock to the surface, dissolve out the salt in big baths and then evaporate off the water by burning fuel. Slaves in salt mines tended to have a very short life expectancy (but were beautifully preserved).

Modern salt mines pump water into holes drilled in the rock and suck back concentrated brine; no heavy digging, much less water to evaporate. I don't know when this technique was introduced, but it's relatively modern.

Salt pan salt comes from deserts - anywhere else is too damp. Mining it's no trouble, but the logistics of getting tons of it to ports to export are not evident, until railways are using condensors to conserve steam, and thus water. How much weight can a camel carry?

Salt from the Alps, particularly the Swiss mines in Bex, is deficient in iodine, leading to thyroid problems, dwarves and giants (salt is not just sodium chloride; there are generally several other mineral – um– salts mixed in) cretinism and goitre.

And expensive enough that "salary" comes from the legions being paid in it, if they were "worth their salt". You could get by without pepper; without salt, in a hot climate, you will die fairly rapidly.

 

[Kissmequick]

Why do you say it was so expensive? Do you have prices?

I ask because, AFAIK, salt was purchased by just about everyone. So how expensive could it be? *Pepper* was expensive. Gold was expensive. I don't see salt being in the same price point.

Because if everyone needs it, wellll, if they need it, they have to pay, right? Also, it got taxed a lot, becuase, well, because a lot of people needed it (up to 100% IIRC) And if you use it in certain rituals as well as your body needs it (pepper and gold don't really fall into the same category, being more 'nice but not essential for the working of my body'), then it's pretty vital

It's one of those things -- you can charge as much as the market will bear, so people do charge it. Unless you're a government, in which case you can try to control the price (by taxing more or less, among other things)

Here's a nice little link, with sections on the economics of salt, and its uses in religion and warfare . For example:

Thousands of Napoleon's troops died during the French retreat from Moscow due to inadequate wound healing and lowered resistance to disease—the results of salt deficiency

 

[sknox]

But nothing in that says anything about actual price. For example, wheat was a necessity (not biologically, but practically), but that doesn't mean it was expensive. It could be, in times of famine, of course.

Yes, salt could be taxed. You're probably thinking of the gabelle. But even that was only taxed starting in the 15th century (Louis XI, I think).

Getting any idea of relative prices in ancient times is extremely difficult, but here's something we might use as a benchmark: the prices set under Emperor Diocletian. In this document
http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/090904.pdf
on page 9 is a table. By it you can see that the value of salt was equivalent to the value of wheat, was only a sixth to the tenth the value of honey, half to one-seventh of wine, and so on.

In other words, not all that expensive.

 

[Kissmequick]

I think at least a couple of sources mention it as being as expensive as gold*. It's probably going to depend hugely on your culture -- the closer you are to natural salt deposits, the cheaper it would probably be (mining is more expensive, and so is cargo-moving). Or if it's vital for your religious ceremonies, or is seen as a sign of wealth. It's also going to fluctuate over time, again depending on factors, so while it might have been cheap in that Emperor's time, in that area, that's not to say it wasn't different elsewhere/when - for instance when the coastal flats in the Med - vital for their preferred method of salt production - began to be innundated c 400AD, then it became harder/more difficult to refine salt. Harder to obtain almost certainly meant price went up. Later on, sea levels reduced again, leaving lots of nice flats. Bound to have an effect.

An indication of its importance (maybe related to price, maybe not but definitely value) is that the trade routes were named the Salt Roads, (like the Silk Route, Amber Road etc).


* I suspect/seem to remember these were times when the price was artificially high to help gather taxes for wars, but I don't know that for sure.

BTW the gabelle was in fact intro'd in the late 1200s IIRC. It's just that it became more of a problem leading up to the French Revolution.

 

[Glisterspeck]

But nothing in that says anything about actual price. For example, wheat was a necessity (not biologically, but practically), but that doesn't mean it was expensive. It could be, in times of famine, of course.

Yes, salt could be taxed. You're probably thinking of the gabelle. But even that was only taxed starting in the 15th century (Louis XI, I think).

Getting any idea of relative prices in ancient times is extremely difficult, but here's something we might use as a benchmark: the prices set under Emperor Diocletian. In this document
http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/090904.pdf
on page 9 is a table. By it you can see that the value of salt was equivalent to the value of wheat, was only a sixth to the tenth the value of honey, half to one-seventh of wine, and so on.

In other words, not all that expensive.

I only got to look at the table and the paragraphs on either side, but this looks pretty awesome! Look forward to reading the rest tonight.

It looks like these are price caps as part of a government controlled wage and cost of living policy. I wonder if it may have been used to control the prices of some commodities? After all, the US engages in similar cost control subsidies for food. I think beef would be over $20 dollars a pound without them, but can't remember at the moment.

Anyway, looks like a fun read!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Why do you say it was so expensive? Do you have prices?

I ask because, AFAIK, salt was purchased by just about everyone. So how expensive could it be? *Pepper* was expensive. Gold was expensive. I don't see salt being in the same price point.

It would surprise you. In medieval times they often had a vessel to hold the salt, a very fine vessel usually, which sat on the top, Lord's table. Where you sat in relation to it showed your status, and it's where the term "below the salt" comes from.

The town I live in forms part of the Irish pale (as in "beyond the pale" where the vicious, barbarian locals lived), and was settled by the medieval lords. It also has a lot of salt mines, as it happens, all around the town, so we can assume there are a lot of salt deposits in the area (we're by the sea). Those seams were not mined in the medieval period, so it might be safe to assume that some deposits required later technology to either mine, or be profitable to do so.

 

[Venusian Broon]

It would surprise you. In medieval times they often had a vessel to hold the salt, a very fine vessel usually, which sat on the top, Lord's table.

You mean something a bit like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saliera

It's a particularly exquisite one, but I believe it also represents symbolically Francis I's control of the salt taxes, so it gives you some idea what value they put on it

 

[sknox]

I don't mean to be argumentative here, he argued, but just because the container is expensive doesn't prove the contents were expensive.

Irish salt pans? I'd be interested to know where. The famous ones are in the Bay of Biscay, where you have very big tides and flat land. I always picture cliffs when I think of Ireland. Those *$#% tourist photos, right?

Anyway, there's a good deal of nonsense on the Interwebs when I went looking, including statements that only the nobility could afford salt. Presumably everyone else lived on ... er ... sodium pills ... or something. Another statement was that while one can extract salt from salt water, it's impossible to get enough to sell commercially. That would be news to the fleets sailing to the Bay of Bourgneuf.

It's a jungle out there....