Think, Laugh, Cry #49

The hidden history of salt...how a mineral we ignore today once built empires, funded wars, and kept civilizations alive.

THINK

There is a small dish on nearly every table on earth, and almost no one looks at it twice. Salt is the most ordinary thing we own. We knock it over and toss a pinch over a shoulder out of a superstition we no longer remember the reason for. We are told to eat less of it. It is cheap enough that we treat spilling it as an annoyance rather than a loss. And yet for most of human history this dull white mineral sat closer to gold than to garnish, and the story of who controlled it is very nearly the story of civilization itself.

Start with the strangest part, which is that we are, in a quiet way, made of it.