Salt had more value than gold in ancient times - Know why!

New Delhi: Salt is a mineral that absolutely no kitchen in the world can function without. It is basically one of the sole ingredients responsible for giving food the taste that we so desire.

There are many myths and lies surrounding the white taste-inducing mineral that we have all been led to believe.

One of them, however, takes the cake and surprisingly, it has nothing to do with health.

You probably must have heard at least one elder of your family say that “salt was once worth more than gold” because of the importance it held in food preservation. Sound familiar?

Well, if a YouTube historian by the name of Lindybeige is to be believed, this is downright false. The historian explains that, going by trade documents from Venice in 1590, you could purchase a ton of salt for 33 gold ducats (ton the unit of measure, not the hyperbolic large quantity). However, the existence of similar figures from ancient Egypt tell a different story, which says that, salt was never worth more than gold.

Then, what, you may wonder, is the truth behind the notion? As it happens, there’s a reasonable and interesting explanation for it.

The Venetian trade documents in question, say that, only one of those 33 ducats was actually equivalent to the cost of the salt itself. The rest was spent on transportation, tax, and profit, which people recompensed gladly, since salt was a necessity for survival.

This basically means, that the reason you have been hearing about salt being more valuable than gold, all this time, is wrong. The fact is that it was actually salt trade that held more worth than the gold industry.

Check out the video elaborating the fact!

(Video courtesy: Lindybeige)