Why salt was so important throughout history (2018)
bookworm.club
bookworm.club
I used to think this as well but it's apparently not true! In hunter gatherer tribes (and probably early agricultural groups) it sufficed for two parties to agree that one was getting the better deal and agree there was a debt. Then in a later transaction the debt would likely go the other direction, as the party in debt for the first transaction overpaid. This cycle seems to have repeated indefinitely if everyone stayed on reasonably good terms. Importantly, the stability of communities was the bedrock of these types interactions. Once communities got extremely large (1000s) or travelers became common place, the kind of comparative you're discussing seems to have become more important.
I'd recommend reading "Debt, the First 5000 Years" to learn more
In nature there is no such thing as borrowing from the future (natures favourite debt is borrowing from the past = chop wood 2 years before you're supposed to burn it to give it time to dry, plant months before you harvest, share discoveries without copyright/patent, that sorta thing), it's a purely human/predatory thing to think you can fool others into debt; sacrificing their own offspring like that: because either way you turn it you're probably not going to want to be around when it's time to pay the "real" price of debt = voluntary slavery, then energy collapse followed by a shitstorm of domino-effects! History rhymes they say.
I think all economic "professors", writing books about a past they have no clue about, probably suffer from this good old quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Eventually you'll see how biased/"sunk cost" David Graeber was to think that "stone-agers had debt too" like they would care... it was probably salt/shells as lubrication or smack them over the head before the deal was over.
The more I think about it the more I'm convinced debt only came with generalized written/read language and all the book-keeping crap the Italians discovered in the 14th century, about the same time the first Chineese dude forbid silver with punishement of death and started printing paper bills...
So yes, there was debt but not the kind of orderly debt you and I are thinking about, but rather the debt of people exploiting others for decades and almost getting away with it; "debt", those stories never seem to get fairy-tale endings though.
So what is really different this time? Nothing!
Trust me if it's one story that has been on repeat for the last 20-30 centuries it's monetary inflation, and energy inflation never seems to agree with that; because you can't print energy: all revolutions are monetary, but before that they are increase in entropy!
Seen that we're on the peak of the largest possible energy bubble, by time of storage (millions of years of sunlight creating coal, oil and gas), powering the largest fictionary money/debt bubble any monkey could be fooled into believing, I would say it's time to talk to David Graeber about what really happened in the past!
The real connection is violence! Debt is voilence postponed; salt means peace, atleast for now!
That may be true with one-off interactions, but in smaller communities or with individuals that you have regular (trading) contact with, screwing someone over would make you into a social pariah.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory#Infinitely_long_ga...
Between two tribes of 100 I'm pretty sure it was permanent war; unless they where symbiotic, in which case I would call them one tribe of 200.
Energy (heat, water, food) where really scarce when you hadn't figured out coal, oil and gas yet or now after those discoveries of reserves have peaked.
I think it requires atleast one day of cold, thirsty, hunger to be able to understand what social in those days felt like.
As for game theory it's just a pretentious labeling of "force the hand" incentives when many people are involved, you don't need a theory for that, it's allready proven.
Basically it's why debt (as inflation = negative real rates) works in the first place: somebody gives you an incentive to not give a damn about your own kids future by pointing at theories that have failed over and over again in history but somehow they still manage to "socially" convince you that it's ok because everyone is doing it!
Everything in life is a pyramid scheme, but most things end up being ponzi schemes, you just have to learn to see the difference.
Well you would be wrong to call them one tribe. The US and Mexico have a symbiotic relationship, are they one country?
And it's good that you are "pretty sure" it would be war, but would you like to post any sources at all? Or is this just your gut feeling?
"Basically it's why debt (as inflation = negative real rates) works in the first place: somebody gives you an incentive to not give a damn about your own kids future by pointing at theories that have failed over and over again in history but somehow they still manage to "socially" convince you that it's ok because everyone is doing it!
Everything in life is a pyramid scheme, but most things end up being ponzi schemes, you just have to learn to see the difference."
You have gone really off topic here and I am struggling to see what this has to do with the original topic. You also seem to have an agenda that isn't really related to the topic of debt in the ancient world.
Now imagine if the lender could just print cows! Now you know how the current clown show is run (debt = inflation, as real interest rates go below zero)!
And by failing to understand it you are punishing your own kids.
We have physical documents recording debts well back into the Sumerian period. At the time, financial records were inscribed in clay and stored in government buildings. When a city was sacked, these buildings would be torched, baking the clay tablets to ceramic, and then burying them under ash, preserving them for the ages. We have tens of thousands of these documents.
So, no, finance was not, in fact, invented in 14th-century AD Italy. And, no, formal, legally-binding debt existed long before there was currency.
Of course we don't need it, and too much salt is indeed bad for us [1] [2] (hence all the campaigns about eating less salty).
According to the references I've quickly found, for instance, an American consumes on average 3,400mg of sodium per day when the body needs less than 500mg (obviously this may be higher if you sweat a lot for some reason).
[1] https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-mater...
[2] https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Your point seems only about how much really is too much and the article you linked to is suggesting that the WHO recommendation is very conservative. However, I'm not really clear why you think any of my previous comment or references were misleading: I don't think it is under debate that we do not need all the sodium we eat and that too much of it is indeed bad for health.
The point being in general we do eat much more sodium than we need (which, to re-centre things, was the original question).
For inland communities, meat and salt licks. For coastal communities, seawater.
> There’s the argument that goes “people never ate salt in modern quantities so evolutionary speaking this is a new shock to the system”.
These arguments are indistinguishable from those suffering from the naturalistic fallacy [1] (EDIT: appeal to nature). One can construct an argument in its form for and against virtually any behavior, depending on what evidence one considers (e.g. which populations one samples), assumptions one makes (interpolating the archaeological evidence) and how far back one looks (early civilization, early humans, early hominids, et cetera).
Many of the modern differences in environment from earlier humans would be considered "good" by most people. Extra salt is probably "bad" in most cases, but it is definitely different.
It's not. But neither is a senior person living healthily and happily into their late years something evolution considered. We're trying our biology in ways evolution doesn't care for, aiming for goals it never considered.
Rhetorically, I can construct arguments for (coastal communities being historically healthy and consuming more salt) and against (ancient civilizations were chronically salt starved) modern salt consumption with this form of argument. There are too many degrees of freedom amidst sparse evidence in a diverse, heterogenous archaeological record.
> modern differences in environment from earlier humans would be considered "good" by most people
Those people tend to consider the nutrient-rich versions of plants we've bred for millennia while disregarding the toxins, pathogens and general wear-and-tear a Paleolithic human would have been subjected to.
People living into their late years was not uncommon historically. The huge changes to life expectancy in modern times are largely explained by so many fewer dying in childhood and child birth.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...
So far as I can tell, it seems like you are talking about something closer to "appeal to nature", and your own link even has a line urging people not to confuse one for the other.
>The naturalistic fallacy should not be confused with the appeal to nature fallacy, which is exemplified by forms of reasoning such as "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable."
Many of our biggest civilizations have access to the ocean or river deltas. They would have had access to salt. From what I understand, predators get their entire salt intake from the animals they eat (blood, in particular?), and when we ate the entire animal that probably would have worked for us as well.
If you're trying to get salt from plants it's because you don't or won't have other options. There was a time that discovering salt deposits within your kingdom had huge political implications.
That's not to say that's a good thing, sodium intake is a U-shaped curve. Too little is as bad as too much. Here [1, check figure 1] is a study comparing heart disease, stroke, etc. vs sodium excretion (as a proxy for sodium intake). The standard dietary recommendation is 2300mg, which is well below the minimum point in the graph.
And the 'high sodium diet' (3400mg) of average person is also below it, most people should probably be eating more salt, especially if they are sweating more from exercise or live in a hot climate.
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1105553
That's a very dangerous advice to give loosely based on one paper and against the advice of about all health organisations worldwide...
It's the usual suspects really. Food/beverages are made to be sold at a profit so choice and proportion of ingredients usually comes down to either cost reduction or increased sales.
To put it plainly, people who consume abnormally low amounts of salt don't do it out of choice - nobody enjoys eating their food without salt. They do it because the doctor tells them that it's either that, or a heart attack.
It makes sense of course that cardiovascular events will be more prevalent in this group than any other group.
Studies like the one you link to control for pre-existing cardiovascular disease, but having CV disease doesn't mean you cut down on salt.
The same methodological flaw has previously caused studies to report that very low alcohol consumption is better than moderate alcohol consumption for the heart, for example. I have a link somewhere if you want.
Btw, the study you linked to used the data from two studies comparing two anti-hypertensive drugs to each other or to placebo, so we know that basically everyone in the study already had some kind of underlying disease. Additionally, the study data included a one-time measurement, which significantly reduces its statistical power, despite its large population (you gotta take multiple measurements to minimise sampling error).
Children in Slovakia all know a fairy tale called Soľ nad zlato ("Salt over Gold", translated as The Salt Prince) written by Pavol Dobšinský likely sometime in the late 1800's.
It was made into a film in 1983 which became somewhat known internationally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Prince
In the story, the king gets offended in relation to salt, and bans it. Everyone in the land, as well as their livestock, gets sick in addition to having to deal with bland food and losing appetite.
From one full text on the web: "Pomaly odpadla ľuďom všetka chuť do jedenia. Len už tej soli aspoň ako márny mak si každý žiadal na jazyk. Ešte aj statok trpel. Kravy a ovce prestali dojiť, pretože nemali soli. Ľudia chodili ako omámení a upadali do chorôb. Kráľ a jeho dcéry vyzerali už len ako tône."
"Gradually, the people shed all their appetite. Everyonec craved even just a tiny smidgeon of salt on their tongues. Even the livestock suffered. Cows and sheep ceased to yield milk for lack of salt. People walked about as if drugged, and fell into illnesses. The king himself and his daughters looked but like shadows."
Same as the expression "(not) worth one's salt". Roman soldiers used to get paid in salt instead of money a lot of the time.
Basically long form marketing for your product.
I have been to my share of mines and caves but never to a salt mine. This mine is massive and has entire underground lakes and even a chapel, with a beautiful Last Supper relief and altar and chandeliers all hand-carved from the salt walls - by tradesmen no less, not artists. They actually have mass in the chapel every week.
The massive salt deposits were what enabled the Polish kingdom to even be a thing. It was a huge economic boom.
Highly recommend a visit if you are in the area.
You can lick the walls and they taste like salt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C4%83nic_mine
[2] https://www.romania-insider.com/planetarium-slanic-salt-mine
Additionally, the tours have two sections - the first half that everyone does, and then they offer you the choice of going back up, or going to the museum area; definitely worth spending the extra time (particularly as it seems few people actually do it, so you'll have a chance to actually speak with the guide in more depth).
I've been twice and would happily go again - couple years ago now, so maybe things have changed.
I really should curate my photos - I took hundreds :)
Nobody cares what those peppers look like, and the tilling, planting, and harvesting, washing, and crushing are all pretty automated. Vinegar and salt are also pretty cheap, as is bottling equipment.
sodium replaces insulin because it also causes your body to hold on to water. so it was very important because you needed it to offset lower insulin and also because you were losing it much more. if you didnt have access to salt back then you would have become very ill.
a modern person who eats almost nothing but sugar in one form or another and in enormous quantities has so much insulin that they barely need any sodium unless they drink large amounts of water. we even tell people to have less sodium. but earlier people werent that way.
Any clue why the bacteria that can survive the salt happens to be a "good" one? What has stopped "bad" bacteria that can survive the salt too from evolving?
I believe the answer is that "bad" bacteria CAN oftentimes survive in environments with high-salinity [1], but struggle to compete with lactic-acid bacteria (i.e. "good" bacteria - LAB) in the presence of both a saline environment as well as a high ph environment. LAB also engage in antimicrobial activities within your gut [2] likely using bacteriocins as the mechanism.
Salt generally inhibits fungal growth though.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/243/2/373/495985
Till refrigeration came along, the most important usage of salt was in preserving food. In wars like the US Civil War for instance, special missions were undertaken by the Union to destroy the Confederacy's Salt Works. That then meant that the Confederates could not preserve sufficient food, and therefore the Confederate soldiers had problems with malnutrition, one of the reasons the Confederacy lost the US Civil War.
It certainly was done. Looking back at history, the places that could efficiently do so were major salt exporters; which rendered it uneconomical to do elsewhere.
You can look at salt pans on Google Maps. Here is one I have been to:
https://goo.gl/maps/uN968Stn6kPHnH6E7
Obviously today this is done with gigantic machines, and the cost/kg is incredibly low to the point that locals do not pay for salt, but back before the advent of Caterpillar, I imagine harvesting salt this way was very labor intensive.
There is a documentary on Amazon called My Name is Salt about the salt harvest in India. It is quite good.
Other than needing some decent sunlight and not super-high humidity - what am I getting wrong?
And that heavy rain (monsoon, etc) will wipe out all your work.
Heavy rain would indeed wipe out all your work, which is why you would do it in the drier seasons.
Then, once you have done that, transporting it from coastal areas was also a big undertaking.
Here in the US, we mostly slaughtered the natives and forced the survivors into reservations rather than coming up with clever ways of controlling them. Is our way or the British way more petty?
In comparision, the Britishers were saints. They did not perform genocide (until Churchill came around... that was the age of barbarians unfortunately)
[1] As you can tell from the history of the site, I originally wrote the salt post in 2018 and then didn't do anything for a few years. I recently quit my job and took a 1-year sabbatical (which will probably end up being only 9 months) [2] and finally invested the time/energy to build the book club service I had been kicking around all this time. The blog is my place to discuss interesting ideas from whatever books I'm reading (such as this fascinating "resulting" idea [4] I learned from Thinking In Bets). If you would like to contribute to the blog I am open to that possibility (just dig around on the site or my personal site to figure out how to contact me).
[2]: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue
I only see how to add books to my account or to connect GoodReads (which I don’t use).
How can I see what other people are reading or if I have any matches? I don’t even see anything like “zero matches”…
Since the submission today has been on the front page, you should wait at least a few weeks before doing this, to let the hivemind caches clear. Follow-up posts shouldn't come too quickly or else they start having an anti-curiosity effect (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
If you want to send a draft to hn@ycombinator.com, I can help you edit it. The same offer goes for anybody. However: be aware that the inbox is brutal, my worst case latency is shit, and so you may end up having to wait a long time!