Exploring the World of Chemistry by Tiner John Hudson

Author:Tiner, John Hudson [Tiner, John Hudson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Youth, SCIENCE / Chemistry / General, RELIGION / Christian Education / Children &#38
ISBN: 9781614581543
Publisher: Master Books
Published: 2001-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Lot’s wife

If a Roman soldier from ancient times could come to modern America following a winter storm, he would be surprised. He would see what he thought of as money being dumped on the streets. Today salt is cheap enough to spread on roads and sidewalks to melt ice. That was not true in ancient times.

Ancient people had fewer sources of salt so it was more highly prized. Roman soldiers received part of their pay in salt. The Roman word for salt, sal, is the root word for “salary.” The value of salt is shown by the expression, “He is worth his salt.” The expression refers to soldiers who earned the salary of salt.

The city of Ostia in Italy supplied salt to Rome by evaporating seawater from the Mediterranean Sea. Like the oceans, water from the Mediterranean Sea contained about three percent salt. After being led into shallow lakes, sunlight evaporated the water. The thick mixture of salt and water was drained into smaller pans for further drying. So important was Ostia to the Roman Empire that the highway to the sea was named Via Salarium, or the Road of Salt.

About 1,600 years ago, the sea level changed and flooded the salt beds at Ostia. Rome turned to another supply in the Middle East land of Israel: the Dead Sea. Although salt was far more concentrated in the Dead Sea, returning it to Rome was a greater chore. A caravan of a thousand camels each carrying 500 pounds of salt hauled it out.

For a long time, historians wondered why some cities thrived in harsh climates such as at the edge of deserts. Other cities in more favorable climates fell into ruin. They found that many civilizations developed near deserts because salt was plentiful. At the edge of the Sahara Desert in Africa, the city of Timbuktu survived because the desert supplied salt. Other cities could not find salt because frequent rains dissolved it. Salt disappeared into the ground or was washed away. Those cities without salt either died out or had to pay high prices for their salt.

Salt was so valuable in Bible times that people added clay to make it last longer. In the Bible, the salt which lost its saltiness (Matt. 5:13) was salt with clay or sand added. The clay was all that remained after the salt had been washed out.

Salt does more than flavor foods because humans require salt in their diets. Some of the necessary nutrients such as proteins will not dissolve in water alone. Salt helps dissolve the protein for blood to carry throughout the body.

Livestock and wild animals need salt just as humans do. Farmers put salt blocks in the barnyard for their cattle. Ranchers drop salt blocks by airplane so their livestock will not have so far to travel to satisfy their need for the mineral. Deer and other wild animals travel to natural salt licks. A salt lick is soil that has a natural deposit of salt.

In Africa, explorers discovered a cave that had been dug into the mountain.

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