by Darian Peters

Created on: April 18, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Salt began to be used as a seasoning in the Neolithic era. Previous humans had been hunters who ate a lot of meat, which already contained plenty of salt. The farmers of the Neolithic, on the other hand, had a diet that included plenty of vegetables and cereals as well, which had relatively little salt, so salt was added.

In these early days people found a variety of ways to obtain salt including the use of surface deposits, boiling seawater, mining deposits, or by burning seaside plants and recovering the salt from the resulting ash.

Hallstatt (meaning 'Salt Town') in Austria had the first known salt mine in Europe, dating back to the first millennium BC. The British Celts mined salt in the Iron Age. Droitwich in the English Midlands was used by the Romans as a site for a salt works. The affix 'wich' actually means 'a place where there is salt'.

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