Early human hunters obtained their salt from eating animal meat. As they turned to agriculture and the diet changed, they found that salt (maybe as sea water) gave vegetables the same salty flavour they were accustomed to with meat.

Over many millennia, they learned how salt helped to preserve food, cure hides and heal wounds. Nomadic bands would have carried salt with them and traded it with other bands for different goods.

This History of Salt section will take you on the journey of our relationship with salt from ancient times through to the chemical revolution.