History

Salt has been used since 5500 BC. In that time salt was not known as a tastemaker, but as a medium to preserve food and in egypt as a component for mummifying. Salt was also used to salt the ground, this way plants wouldn’t grow there and roads were made.
Solnitsata was the first town in Europe which was salt mining. It is located in Bulgaria and was known as the salt supplier for the Balkans.

In europe salt was quickly used as a method of paying. A fun fact is that the word salary is distracted from the latin word ‘salarium’ which means wage and that word is distracted from the word ‘sal’ which means salt.

Salt was a scarce good, so it was only accessible for the richer citizen. In this time the royal houses also noticed the worth of salt and started implementing taxes.
Because salt was so valuable, it was a big factor in determing the power and location of world’s great cities. For example, Liverpool became a very important city because of the export of salt from the Cheshire salt mines. But salt has not only caused power, it also caused war.

Later, in modern times, it became cheaper to sell salted food than selling pure salt, so the food producers and salt producers started collaborating.