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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Frugal
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If it's okay to go waaaaay back: salt. It's always mind-blowing to me that people all over europe during the medieval age or even before that couldn't season anything with salt cause it often was as expensive as gold itself. If I imagine those huge amounts of salt if you wanna pickle some meat or fish. Today salt costs nearly nothing, nearly everybody can afford it and it's so basic that some even don't consider it "seasoning" at all.
Aluminium once was way more expensive than gold. That's why the top of the obelisk in Washington is made from aluminum.
I imagine those beside the ocean must have figured out what happens when boiling sea water. But I guess it was scaling it that was an issue?
Tons of English phrases and words have salty origins, like salary.
Yeah, the scaling and transportation. If you wanted salt near the alps it was expensive as hell and mostly the salt came from mines, but that was a very difficult task.
Salary comes from salty? Like in a good way? I know an old "word" for salt in German is "weißes Gold" (white gold).
Sal is latin (and also French to this day) for salt. Salary referred originally to the amount of salt you received as payment.
In other romantic languages too! like portuguese
There are no ancient sources stating that salary was literal salt bring handed to roman soldiers, I believe the current best theory is that it was "money for salt" that was given to soldiers.