Salt is a
dietary mineral composed primarily of
sodium chloride that is essential for
animal life, but can be toxic to many
land plants. Salt
flavor is one of the
basic tastes, making salt the oldest, ubiquitous food seasoning. Salt is also an important
preservative.
Salt for human consumption is produced in different forms unrefined salt (such as sea salt), refined salt (table salt), and iodized salt. It is a crystalline solid, white, pale pink or light gray in color, normally obtained from sea water or rock deposits. Edible rock salts may be slightly grayish in color because of mineral content.
Human beings have used canning and artificial refrigeration for the preservation of food for approximately the last two hundred years. However, in the millennia before then, salt provided the best-known food preservative, especially for meat.[1] The harvest of salt from the surface of Xiechi Lake near Yuncheng in Shanxi, China dates back to at least 6000 BC, making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks.[2]18–19
Another very ancient saltworks operation (rivaling the Xiechi Lake in China for oldest) has been discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamt County, Romania. Evidence indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of Briquetage to extract the salt as far back as 6050 BC.[3] The salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began.[4]
