The Legend Is Shattered! Salt Has Never Cost More Than Gold

Video: The Legend Is Shattered! Salt Has Never Cost More Than Gold

Video: The Legend Is Shattered! Salt Has Never Cost More Than Gold
Video: Salt - more valuable than gold? 2024, December
The Legend Is Shattered! Salt Has Never Cost More Than Gold
The Legend Is Shattered! Salt Has Never Cost More Than Gold
Anonim

One of the loudest claims about salt is that it once cost more than gold. This turns out to be the biggest lie in the history of the spice.

The belief that salt was more expensive than gold in the past has been accepted by all peoples. Idioms have even appeared in speech. For example, in English the word for salary comes from the Latin word salarium. It was used to denote a portion of salt that every Roman soldier deserved.

The whole legend that in ancient times salt was more expensive than gold because of its properties in food storage, is an extreme misunderstanding. A reference to trade documents from Venice from 1590 shows that in those years with 33 gold ducats it was possible to buy a ton of salt. Tone in this case is not a metaphor, but a real unit of measurement. There are similar data from Ancient Egypt.

However, the same Venetian trade documents reveal that only one of these gold ducats covered the value of a tonne of salt. The rest went for taxes, transportation costs and directly to the manufacturer.

Buyers did not mind paying this price, because salt was essential for human survival. However, this unequivocally shows that salt has never been more expensive than gold.

This ultimately shows that the legend came about due to a misunderstanding. The overpricing of salt from those years shows that it is possible that for some time the salt market exceeded that of gold.

Types of salt
Types of salt

However, the real price of the spice never exceeded that of the precious metal with a yellow color.

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