The "The International Commission for the History of Salt"
http://www.uibk.ac.at/sci-org/salt-history/index.html

recently had their meeting in WEIMAR Germany
Did anyone attend ?


Dear Halophiles
My apologies for not joining you earelier
As you surely have discovered, few are interested
in salt - [until perhaps they consider
some basic facts].
But even then, salt is looked upon
as any other commodity.

May I say welcome
to all you HALOPHILEs and ask you
to consider discussing salt as one of the
four essential elements of animal life which
today we take for granted:
eg:
# air - oxygen [still available - for breathing ]
# water [becoming more limted - for drinking ]
# protein proteios [inspite of BSE - for developing physique]
# salt [ physiological electrolytes -
today in unlimited supply]

Until the Industrial revolution things were very different
Of these four critical "elements" , salt was at times in such
short supply that the resulting protection systems for
those few known sources - the monopolies that we have
since inherited in so many spheres , might be said to
have been the direct cause of much of our civil
unequality

Salt supplies were extremely limited at times
and its manufacture depended on primitiive fuels
or on sea shore evaporation systems.
To be fair to the historians there were short periods
of tranqulity and of liberal civilisation
Democratic ideology left us with the hope that
we were again moving towards the legendary
equality of those elite societies. - but no historian
has suggested that the freedom from such monpolies
wes the freedom to make salt.





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