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National Geographic : 1977 Sep
Contents
conditions to mine work. Almost all improved. For the past 13 years, he has maintained a therapeutic center on the fifth level, some 700 feet down, away from day or night, heat or cold, summer or winter. It was doubling in size, the day I talked with him. Miners were blasting their way into another cavern to be added to his facility. "The eventual goal is 800 beds," the doctor said, "with a kitchen, library, recreation room, physical-therapy area, movie theater, and whatever else is needed for patients' comfort during their 24-day convalescence in the regenerative salt air down here." Iron Age Mine Still Producing I crossed northern Austria to visit one of the oldest enterprises on earth, the Hallstatt mine (page 391), high above a gorgeous Alpine lake 50 miles from Salzburg-Salt Town. Except for a time in the Middle Ages, salt has been mined at Hallstatt at least since the early Iron Age. And there's still a lot left from those deposits laid down 180 million years ago in a shallow sea between Bohemia and the Alps. Titanic forces thrust salt up as a plug, 2,000 feet wide and 2,500 feet deep, in side a mountain. Today, like the Wieliczka mine, Hallstatt's is a brine operation, and a tourist magnet as well. Lifted by cable car up the mountainside, I joined a tour group sampling the 25 miles of galleries that honeycomb the Salzberg-Salt Mountain. From one chamber a pair of pol ished wooden poles angled down into dark ness. We straddled the "banisters" and zoomed down to a lower chamber, trailing youngsters' squeals of nervous delight. Life was more serious here 2,500 years ago. Miners hewed heart-shaped chunks of rock salt (page 391), then backpacked the precious commodity out to daylight, where it entered the trade channels of Celtic Europe.* Salt, in those distant days, filled a vital need as a preservative. It drew moisture from meat, dehydrating it to delay spoilage. Until the advent of refrigeration, most flesh in Europe's diet was salted. Shortage of winter feed meant that most livestock had to be slaughtered and salted down in autumn. The Hanseatic League rose to wealth on the back of salted fish, staple food on the *See "The Celts" by Merle Severy, NATIONAL GEO GRAPHIC, May 1977. meatless days of Roman Catholic Europe. Baltic herring, cured in salt from Liineburg, a North German member city of the medieval mercantile league, entered the trade for Bor deaux wines, English wool, Flemish cloth, Pomeranian grain, Swedish iron, Russian furs. Ironically, salt may have hastened the league's decline. Early in the 16th century the great shoals of herring ceased to go to the Bal tic to spawn, perhaps because of a decrease in its salinity. Taking over the herring fishery, now in the North Sea, the Dutch rose to mari time supremacy. Even after the Reformation, England out did Catholic nations in consumption of salted fish. Elizabeth I required her subjects to eat fish on Wednesdays as well as on Fridays, holy days, and during Lent-thus strength ening her fishing fleet, a training ground for salts who defeated the Spanish Armada. Salted provisions enabled early explorers such as Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan to make long voyages and discover new lands. In 1583, a quarter of a century before the founding of Jamestown, Sir Humphrey Gil bert, half brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, claimed land for England in North America at St. John's, Newfoundland. He sought con trol of the Grand Banks cod fisheries, worked by Basques, Bretons, and Bristol mariners. The Portuguese had already been coming for 80 years. They still do. Portugal's fishing schooners, which in sea son line the wharves of St. John's, are salty ships indeed. Tons of salt lie in their holds to preserve the catch. Salt Makes Possible Human Existence By weight you and I are 70 percent fluid the same percentage of the earth's surface that is covered by ocean. The sea within us has the same saltiness as the Precambrian seas of three billion years ago. We all spend our first months in a sac of saline solution; the fetus even passes through an early stage with gill like ridges and tail. From cells in our brains and bones to customs that spice our language and history, salt penetrates every aspect of our existence. Tonight at dinner, cast a more appreciative eye on that humble saltshaker. Your life and mine depend upon those little white crystals. Our blood, sweat, tears-the very beating of our hearts-all attest to that. [7 Salt-The Essence of Life 401
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