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What is salt?

Salt is a sediment. Its components - sodium and chlorine- were bound up in other minerals and rocks long ago. They were dissolved out of these by weathering and washed away by the water. Since sodium and chlorine are very soluble, the salts (ions, Na+ and CI-) remain in the water when it flows through streams and rivers. Thus, all waters constantly contribute new salt to the great lakes, seas and oceans. But while the water evaporates to find its way back to its sources as clouds and rain, the salt remains in bodies of water with no outflow. It cannot evaporate. Therefore, it accumulates until the solubility of the water can no longer hold the salt. It precipitates and settles as a solid crust. This type of formation is called "chemical sedimentation" because substances of different origins now form a chemically recomposed rock.

One of the oldest salt deposits in the world is the Salt Range in Pakistan, a mountainous area consisting of small plateaus and basins in Punjab province, south of Islamabad. From here comes the salt that is sold today as"Himalayan" or "Hunza salt". This salt, which is up to 540 million years old, was formed in the Cambrian period, an interesting time when an enormous variety of living creatures suddenly populated the earth. Perhaps therefore the misunderstanding comes, the so-called "Himalaya salt" originates from that primeval sea, in which the life originated. That was however 3 billion years earlier. In relation to the earth history salt rocks are relatively "young". If we compare the age of the Earth (4.5 billion years) with a calendar year, life arose at the end of March (3.5 billion years ago), the oldest salt only in mid-November.

How salt is mined plays an important role in the preservation of its natural properties. There are now - depending on the conditions at hand - a whole range of ways to extract salt for a variety of purposes. 

The historical salt extraction:

Historically, the salt extraction belongs to the first "technical achievements" of mankind. Of course, it was first accessible to people where it comes to light openly. In addition to extraction in salt lakes, whose salt crusts are directly accessible, salt boiling in particular played an important role. Sea water or the brine (salt solution) of saline springs was heated in brew pans until all the water evaporated and the dried salt remained. Salines, facilities for salt extraction by evaporation or evaporation of salt water from the Stone Age are found in Europe on the coasts of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, as well as inland at Schwäbisch Hall and Bad Nauheim, among others. Finally, in the Bronze Age, mining of salt began where the salt was found in salt domes or just below the earth's surface. Salt mining of this kind, e.g. at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut, shaped an entire cultural epoch - the so-called "Hallstatt period" from 1200 to 400 BC. With the further development of mining in the following 2000 years, more and more salt deposits were mined until this type of salt mining finally outweighed salt boiling by far. This laid the foundations that still characterize salt mining today.
 

Mining:

Mining means that the salt is extracted in solid form underground. This is done by driving tunnels into the salt rock and blasting the solid rock. This method is the most common and most productive in the world. By the way: blasting is always used! The claim that the salt of certain mines is extracted exclusively by hand either shows ignorance or is targeted marketing to justify high prices. To win salt in the mine only by hand would be nothing else than laborious, bad and health-damaging slave work! It is already curious that this sober fact is not considered, if in nostalgic transfiguration with the "particularly valuable, purely manually won crystal salt" is advertised. At this point, we heartily recommend a visit to the salt mine to set the facts straight. Where actually a lot of manual labor is done is in the further processing of the salt in the mining areas of the Third World. While in technically highly equipped plants in the industrialized nations, the mining, transport, crushing, grinding, sorting, weighing and packaging of the salt is largely automated, this is done, for example, in salt mining in the Salt Range, Pakistan, almost exclusively by hand. In the actual mining in the tunnel, however, is also blasted here!So there is no "mined" by hand, but only by hand "processed" salt.

The text listed includes excerpts from the book "SALT - Food, Remedy or Poison" by Michael Gienger and Gisela Glass