Apparently the human body needs quite a bit of salt, and iodine.
But how did pre-civilization tribe members and such who had no access to the ocean get these vital minerals? I know trade in salt was a big deal going way back to the origins of civilization. But what about a tribe who could not get to the sea and had no trade, just what they could hunt and gather?
Well, you can mine salt, and apparently the Ancient Chinese used to drill for it (Cracked article, item #3).
But really, there is salt (sodium) naturally in all food, and unless you are sweating a lot, you do not really need extra in your diet. We add it mostly because it tastes good. As for iodine, we need only minute amounts of it, and in most places (except for a few regions where it is unusually lacking in the soil) you will get plenty just by eating plants, and teh animals that eat those plants.
Europe has a whole bunch of prehistoric salt mining sites.
http://www.seillevalley.com/PrehistoricSites.htm
And prehistoric salt drying sites, too. The premise of “no trade” is what’s pretty weird to try and imagine in Europe. Would that also include “no pillaging the neighbors”?
Not enough iodine, get goiters.
Right, or cretinism at worst, but most places have enough iodine in the soil, so most people are fine and don’t need any supplements.
Also, hunter-gatherers in inland areas without salt sources have been found to excrete less minerals than people in other environments, ie. the human body makes use of what it gets and maintains homeostasis.
blood
Is it not the case that trade pre-dates agriculture, going back tens of thousands of years?
What quartz said. The native American peoples around here (Alberta) had an extensive trade network before European arrival that was quite surprising. I have heard of trading of tobacco, chert, cedar incense, and fish oil. If fish oil was worth all the trouble I am going to bet salt was too.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding the term civilization? Also do people really need supplementary salt in their diet?
Yea I was probably wrong to use the term civilization, I guess I was just trying to say a human population with no access to supplementary salt or iodine in the past.
I was under the impression people do need some supplementary salt especially if they are losing a lot, but it looks like I was wrong because I can’t find a cite.
Before iodised salt, iodine deficiency was a pretty common problem. It’s not just a prehistoric problem: it’s still a big problem in many parts of the world. That is, people in many cases were and are not getting enough iodine. Life goes on: small to moderate iodine deficiency is usually not fatal. You get endemic goiter. It’s the same answer to a lot of these questions.
Q: “What did people do before antibiotics”
A: “Most people managed to fight off infections on there own, but sometimes a blister killed you”
Q: “What did people do before the MMR vaccine”
A: “Many people got measles and recovered from it, but some of them didn’t”
Q: “What did people do before eyeglasses”
A: “Some people had bad eyesight”
Well, none of those things could have been traded before agriculture (except cedar and possibly chert since I don’t know what it is) since they are products of intensive agriculture.
Indeed. Stone tools have been found very long away from the extraction sites.
And it makes complete sense. Those people weren’t different from us, and trading doesn’t require any technology, Sid Meier’s Civilization notwithstanding.
One should also stress that the body needs sodium, not necessarily salt. Salt just so happens to be a common and convenient source of sodium, but it’s certainly not the only source.
All of those things existed before agriculture,
Enjoy a look at contemporary goiters on Google Images if so inclined.
The Indians for whom the ocean wasn’t within reach knew to follow animal trails to salt licks. Nonetheless, salt licks were not necessarily plentiful and salt was a fairly costly commodity inland. What the Eastern Woodlands Indians did have was unlimited supplies of sugar maple trees. So they seasoned their food with sugar rather than salt.
It’s a stone used for arrowheads. It fractures conchoidally, thus producing flakes that can be used for spearpoints, hand-axes, etc.
California Indians were harvesting and trading salt in antiquity, producing as much as 2.5 tons per year from salt springs in the Sierra Nevada mountain range: