Sea Day 109 - to Capetown, South Africa

Civilization was built on salt and, therefore, on the sea.
This is a bold statement, but without salt, humans would not have been able to preserve meat, fish and seasonal food for storage or transport, a practice that dates at least as far back as the 1st century BC. Salt was also used to render the land of conquered enemies useless. So coveted was the mineral by communities, explorers and armies that it was regarded in the same way we regard currency today. In fact, the word "salary" is derived from sal, the Latin word for salt.
Italy's Via Salaria is just one of the many roads built to ease the transport of salt from the sea to the great cities of empires. Along coasts all over the ancient world, salterns extracted the mineral very simply through evaporation, a process that worked best in warm and dry climates. In the Roman Empire, ceramic vessels with narrow necks were used to hasten the process over an open flame. When the water was boiled away, workers broke the vases to get to the salt. Later, some cultures left shallow pans in the sun, letting the water evaporate in its own time.
Traditional salt farms still exist all over the world. Large pans or reservoirs separated by levees are sculpted into the sands, creating an enormous shimmering
patchwork. Like millennia before, the water is simply left to evaporate, then collected for processing before finding its way to your dining table.Läs mer