 Let's spin the globe and land ourselves in Africa. Did that work? The Egyptians were big time foodies, and one of the main reasons was salt. They were quite possibly the first civilization to use salt to cure meats and fish, and they were definitely the first to do it on a massive scale. And surprise, it wasn't the Italians or the Greeks that first made the olive edible, it was the Egyptians. They were the first to soak olives in salt water so they could be eaten. It's also thanks to salt that the Egyptians are responsible for the first raised breads, and as mega food lovers they made all kinds of raised breads. Now, while it can't be confirmed, it's believed that when the Jews left Egypt, they took with them only unleavened matzah bread, as a rejection of the luxuries of salt and Egyptian culture, probably mostly the Egyptian culture. While the Egyptians didn't trade salt as it's really too bulky to do, they did trade lots of salted foods, which increased the food's value a great deal. Engaging in trades with Anatolia for obsidian amongst other things, as far back as the Neolithic era, though the first signs of consistent massive trading started around 2800 BC when the Egyptians traded salt and salted fish to the Phoenicians, who in turn distributed salt to cross northern Africa. No surprise here, the Egyptians also used salt in the mummification process. Seems like they used every urban spice that came across from mummification. However, poor people got mummified with standard salt, but the rich used a specialized salt called natrone, which is primarily a combo of sodium carbonate and baking soda. Natrone was known by the Egyptians as the divine salt. And while it may have been divine, the process of mummification when it came to salt was very similar to that of preserving fish or meat, not so divine. So much so that some people claim that when mummies were shipped down the Nile, they were taxed the same as salted meats. While in Egypt, natrone salt was divine, in other places in Africa, the reverse was true. Natrone was considered the salt of the poor, while your standard table salt was considered the salt of the rich. Though southern Africans were much more used to impure salts. So much so that when the Europeans introduced pure sodium chloride, the Africans would mix other salts in with it to make it taste more palatable. That's not to say salt in Africa was cheap. There are various accounts of salt being traded for gold. Not equal value, but, you know, traded for gold. And in places like Abyssinia, salt was used as a form of currency. The Abyssinians made amoles, which were slabs of rock salt, 10 inches long and 2 inches thick, used for currency. And the Ethiopians loved salt so much, they exchanged it for other goods until 1935. Now, because it's very bulky and awkward to ship, waterways were more often than not used to transport salt. But in the Middle East, they found another way. Camels. Watch out, they spit. And even to this day, goods are transported across Western and Central Africa by camel. By the Middle Ages, caravans with as many as 40,000 camels would trudge through the Sahara Desert to bring salt to markets like Timbuktu, which was also sadly a huge slave market. These days, caravans are still maintained around many of the same salt trading routes. But it's mostly done by truck now. And we've only begun to scratch the surface of the history of salt. But for now, to learn more about salt, you're going to want to watch this video right here.