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How Ancient Salt Mining Transformed Prehistoric Europe

Dan Davis History

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Across prehistoric Europe there were different kinds of salt sources, extraction methods and processing techniques, carried out from the brine springs of the Carpathians, to the rock salt mines of the Alps, and the salt marshes of eastern England. But what was all this salt used for? Who did the hard work at these sites and who might have ruled over them? And how did salt production and trade transform these societies, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age? This is the surprising story of how salt transformed prehistoric Europe.

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Sources

The Lost World of Old Europe https://amzn.to/44YY7LN
Salt: A World History https://amzn.to/4nuJjLi
Salt: White Gold in Early Europe https://amzn.to/4ntwGjx
Salt in Prehistoric Europe https://amzn.to/3VhFopc
The Red Hills of Essex: Salt-making in Antiquity https://amzn.to/3K0mxMV
The Red Hills of Essex, Studying Salt in England by Ian Brown
Michael Grabner et al, Bronze age dating of timber from the salt-mine at Hallstatt, Austria
Vassil Nikolov, The prehistoric salt-production and urban center of Provadia-Solnitsata, Northeastern Bulgaria (2016)
Olivier Weller, The earliest salt production in the world: an early Neolithic exploitation in Poiana Slatinei-Lunca, Romania (2005)
Olivier Weller, Robin Brigand, Laure Nuninger. SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF SALT SPRINGS EXPLOITATION IN MOLDAVIAN PRE-CARPATIC PREHISTORY (ROMANIA).
Morin, D., Lavier, C. & Guiomar, M. (2006). The beginnings of salt extraction in Europe (sixth millennium BC): the salt spring of Moriez (Alpes-de-HauteProvence, France) Antiquity 80 Project Gallery, http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/morin...
Local history site http://past.goldhanger.org.uk/Salt.htm

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Photos by David MacLeod Instagram: graenwulf
Artistic reconstructions by Ancient Europeans Instagram: ancienteuropeans2

Video Chapters

00:00 Salt in Prehistoric Europe
02:00 Sponsor
03:08 Mesolithic Salt Production
05:50 Neolithic Salt Production
09:10 The Salt Fortress of Solnitsata
13:11 Academic Sources
13:34 Bronze Age salt production
15:05 Hallstatt Salt Mines
17:21 Iron Age coastal salt production

20 Comments

@DanDavisHistory Creator 1 year ago (edited) Pinned

Go to buyraycon.com/dandavis to get 20% sitewide! This video was sponsored by Raycon.
Thank you for watching!

@Mr_Drew_Magoo 1 year ago

Dan Davis is worth his salt

@Replicaate 1 year ago

Ancient Europeans seeking out sites with accessible metal ores and good grazing for animals and/or arable land for crops makes perfect sense, and yet it never occurred to me that they'd want to have access to salt too. Thank you as ever for making us consider the often overlooked in prehstory!

@malis9045 1 year ago (edited)

This was always a super fascinating topic as someone from the austrian state of Salzburg(Saltcastle), with its main river the Salzach(Salt-river), which if you follow leads you to the Town of Hallein(Celtic for Salt-town), which of course is a neighbor to the Salzkammergut region(Salt chamber estate). Not to mention our local Patron saint St. Rupert, Patron of Salt Miners who christianized the region and build churches and monasteries financed from the salt-mining rights bestowed upon him

Its been such a cornerstone of how people used to make their living here for millennia

@bremnersghost948 1 year ago (edited)

Drying, Salting, Smoking, and later Pickling the essentials for surviving Winter until the Spring crops came in again. As valid today as it was Millenia ago.

@dotnika-real 1 year ago

i read a book on the ancient mediterranean a couple years ago and one quote stuck with me, (heavily paraphrased cause my memory is poor) "civilization can prosper with bread or gold or pottery, but civilization cannot prosper without salt"

@KentuckyMDL.91 1 year ago

I remember reading one of the first concerns for settlers coming across the appalachians was finding salt. Which is why often you will find small areas called "Lick: IE: Bluelick, Redlick, Bearlick, Deerlick, these all refer to salt lick deposits that settlers used to access.

@assifmirza130 1 year ago

A Dan Davis Deep Dive into salt production in neolithic europe? My day is made.

@b20schill 11 months ago

Not AI slop and that's awesome.

@josephmartin334 1 year ago

Thanks so much, Dan. My favorite history topics are about how ordinary people lived and worked. You do a superb job of bringing the past to life in an educational and enjoyable way.

@AndyJarman 1 year ago

In colonial NSW, about a day's ride south of Sydney, the governor had a tall rectangular tower of sticks constructed at the settlement of Wollingong.

A wind driven pump was employed to pump sea water to the top of the tower.

As the water trickled down in the sea breeze it evaporated and formed a hyper concentrated brine in a basin at the base of the tower.

Across the Australian interior salt pans are actually so plentiful they are a problem.

Modern agricultural practices tend to draw ancient salt deposits below the soil up to the surface, effectively sterilising the soil.

@omaha2pt 1 year ago

From the internet: "The word "salary" originates from the Latin salarium, which refers to the money given to Roman soldiers to buy salt, a highly valuable commodity used for preserving food. The Latin word is derived from sal, meaning salt, and the term salarium eventually evolved from "salt money" or "salt allowance" to the modern concept of wages or remuneration for work. "

@MsManomen 1 year ago

75 km from Halstatt is the city of Salzburg, the name means Salt Town. The local river is also named after salt.

@lithiumvalleyrocksprospect9792 1 year ago

Sodium bicarbonate from evaporation of seawater was essential in flux for metal smelting

@raraavis7782 1 year ago

Yet another fascinating topic I'm glad you explored. I used to live in Halle (Saale) in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany for a couple years in the 2000's. Yet another city with a long, long history tied to salt (and named after it). Salt harvesting via salty springs goes back to the Bronze Age there as well.
And thanks for addressing the whole "salt was as valuable as gold" thing. This always seemed so very odd to me, as salt isn't that rare, after all.

@ddouglas3687 1 year ago (edited)

Had the fortune of actually visiting Salzburg, Austria in the late '80's whereupon we took the tour of one of these tourist oriented salt mines and I was awestruck by the age!
Yet the Austrians who surrounded me were treating it as the ordinary. Still astounds me what and all I saw!

@chrism9493 1 year ago

The oldest wooden staircase in the world looks better than my front porch.

@AhyZdalph 1 year ago

I wonder how the trade routes with salt looked like.

@hrodotos8623 11 months ago

Nice to know about the origins of salt, my second surname is Salgado, it is a common surname in northern Spain, Portugal and Brazil. It is related to people who work with or transport salt.

@CanuckBeaver 1 year ago (edited)

I appreciate the importance of salt. At 83, a retired science teacher, , I was having problems with high blood pressure, 140 +, and concentrating as I write a book. A blood test said I was low on sodium. Doctors said nothing. I looked up low sodium on the Internet. They said those were key symptoms, because sodium is needed for neurons to communicate. I eat mostly organic food. Now I eat sodium via Oxo chicken broth powder. 1 tsp twice a day, and now have 120 with no Rx, and barely need coffee.