It’s hot, really hot. You’re sweaty. You’re losing water like a biological Niagara. What would you rather have, gold or salt?
In the mid-fourteenth century the widely traveled Moroccan geographer Ibn Battuta visited Timbuktu and other Saharan locales now situated within Mali. One of the sites he visited was the salt mine at Taghaza, and he noted in his Rihla (The Journey) that in the desert city gold was exchanged for salt on a one-for-one basis. Salt was worth its weight in gold. That made the area of the salt mines one of great riches, and that was before Timbuktu became an important way station for caravans.
As I asked above, what’s your choice? Of course, you choose the thing you need. Salt has been important to us since our biological beginnings. Well, sodium has been. We get the word salary from the Latin word for “salt,” indicating that from ancient times, when Roman soldiers were given "salt-money," there was recognition of salt’s importance. Like humans, other animals seek it from many sources, but they don’t have our ability or ingenuity to mine salt that formed from evaporating water in ancient seas or get it from salt pans and salt flats in great quantities.
Today, the modern athlete thinks not just of salt, but rather of electrolytes; thus, the popularity of sports drinks. The people in Battuta’s era just thought “salt.” There was no Gatorade to buy or spill over a coach’s head after a victory in a camel race. The Sahara was a great place to demonstrate the human need for salt and the price one might pay to have it. Medieval Mali became a place of wealth.
Now look around. You might not live in the Sahara. If you do, you probably need some salt, and you are willing to pay for it. But let’s say you don’t live there. For what do you exchange your gold? Is it as necessary as salt?
I’m not advocating your hoarding gold here. I just want you to think the next time you are ready to exchange your gold for something. Picture whatever that something is in the arid land of Mali, maybe in Timbuktu. Then ask yourself, “Is this as valuable as salt?”
In the mid-fourteenth century the widely traveled Moroccan geographer Ibn Battuta visited Timbuktu and other Saharan locales now situated within Mali. One of the sites he visited was the salt mine at Taghaza, and he noted in his Rihla (The Journey) that in the desert city gold was exchanged for salt on a one-for-one basis. Salt was worth its weight in gold. That made the area of the salt mines one of great riches, and that was before Timbuktu became an important way station for caravans.
As I asked above, what’s your choice? Of course, you choose the thing you need. Salt has been important to us since our biological beginnings. Well, sodium has been. We get the word salary from the Latin word for “salt,” indicating that from ancient times, when Roman soldiers were given "salt-money," there was recognition of salt’s importance. Like humans, other animals seek it from many sources, but they don’t have our ability or ingenuity to mine salt that formed from evaporating water in ancient seas or get it from salt pans and salt flats in great quantities.
Today, the modern athlete thinks not just of salt, but rather of electrolytes; thus, the popularity of sports drinks. The people in Battuta’s era just thought “salt.” There was no Gatorade to buy or spill over a coach’s head after a victory in a camel race. The Sahara was a great place to demonstrate the human need for salt and the price one might pay to have it. Medieval Mali became a place of wealth.
Now look around. You might not live in the Sahara. If you do, you probably need some salt, and you are willing to pay for it. But let’s say you don’t live there. For what do you exchange your gold? Is it as necessary as salt?
I’m not advocating your hoarding gold here. I just want you to think the next time you are ready to exchange your gold for something. Picture whatever that something is in the arid land of Mali, maybe in Timbuktu. Then ask yourself, “Is this as valuable as salt?”
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