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¿Por Qué Los Humanos Empezaron A Comer Sal? La Increíble Historia — Transcript

by Fosil Metal · 3,273 words · 508 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:01There is something in your kitchen that
0:02your body needs to keep your heart
0:04beating, and it cannot manufacture it.
0:07Not a single one of your cells knows
0:09how to produce it. If your body ran out
0:12of it, your nerves would stop sending
0:15signals, your muscles would cramp, and
0:17your brain would start to swell inside
0:20your skull. It is salt. And here is the
0:24question. How did humans go from
0:27licking rocks like animals to building
0:29walled cities, empires, and even
0:31sparking revolutions around it? Stay
0:35until the end, because after this story
0:37, you will never look at a salt shaker
0:39the same way again. First, a detail
0:42that almost no one knows. All land
0:46animals have the same problem you do.
0:49They need sodium, they cannot produce
0:51it, and they have to go out and find it
0:53. There are deer that walk tens of
0:56kilometers to reach a salt outcrop. On
1:01Mount Elgon, in Kenya, elephants enter
1:03a dark cave at night and scrape the
1:06walls with their tusks to break off
1:08salty rock. In the Amazon, hundreds of
1:12parrots gather at clay banks to eat
1:15soil loaded with minerals. We did
1:18something that no other species managed
1:20to do. We learned to manufacture it,
1:23and that changed the history of every
1:25civilization. But to understand when
1:28and why, first we must look at what
1:31salt does inside you. Your organism
1:34literally runs on sodium. In 1957, the
1:40Danish scientist Jens Christian Skou
1:42described a tiny pump in the membrane
1:45of almost all your cells: the
1:46sodium-potassium pump. It pumps out
1:50three sodium particles and brings in
1:52two potassium ones, over and over,
1:54without rest. That charge difference is
1:58what allows a nerve to transmit a
2:00signal, a muscle to contract, and the
2:02heart to keep its rhythm. For that
2:06discovery, Skou won the Nobel Prize in
2:09Chemistry in 1997. If sodium is lacking
2:14, the pump slows down and signals fail.
2:17Luckily, the body defends itself. When
2:20little salt enters, the kidneys retain
2:22almost all of it and stop releasing it
2:24into the urine. The problem arises when
2:28a lot of sodium is lost suddenly due to
2:30intense sweating, diarrhea, or vomiting
2:32. Doctors call it hyponatremia, which
2:36means low sodium in the blood. When the
2:41level drops below about 120 millimoles
2:43per liter, seizures, coma, and death
2:45can follow. Since there is very little
2:49sodium outside the neurons, water
2:51enters them, the neurons swell, and the
2:53brain expands inside a skull that
2:56cannot give way. Before it is a flavor,
2:59salt is a matter of survival. The funny
3:03thing is that during almost all of our
3:05evolution, no one had to worry about
3:07this. Meat solved it. Raw muscle
3:12contains some sodium, blood contains
3:14quite a bit more, and organs even more.
3:18An ancestor who ate prey, drank its
3:20blood, and ate its organs had all the
3:22sodium they needed without ever seeing
3:24a grain of salt. The Inuit of the
3:29Arctic are the best example. Well into
3:31the 20th century, they practically
3:33added no salt to their food. They lived
3:36on seals, walruses, caribou, and fish,
3:38and that was more than enough for them.
3:41They didn't even have a word of their
3:42own for salt as a separate substance.
3:45That is the key to the whole story.
3:48Salt became a problem just when humans
3:50stopped eating so much meat. Between
3:5510,000 and 12,000 years ago, in the
3:57Fertile Crescent, the Yangtze Valley,
3:59Mesoamerica, and sub-Saharan Africa,
4:01people traded hunting for agriculture.
4:06Plates filled up with wheat, barley,
4:08rice, corn, lentils, and beans. Lots of
4:12energy, but almost no sodium. In 1985,
4:16physician Boyd Eaton from Emory
4:18University calculated in the New
4:21England Journal of Medicine that
4:23Paleolithic hunters consumed about 700
4:26mg of sodium a day, almost all from
4:28animal sources. Today, a person eats on
4:32average nearly 10 g of salt daily.
4:36Between those two figures lies this
4:38entire story. When cereal replaced the
4:41gazelle, a sodium deficit appeared and
4:44the body did what evolution had taught
4:46it. It started to crave salt.
4:49Australian physiologist Derek Denton
4:51spent decades studying that impulse. In
4:551982, he published "The Hunger for Salt
4:57." It is still the reference work on
5:00the subject. With years of experiments
5:03on sheep, cows, rabbits, and rats, he
5:05demonstrated that the appetite for salt
5:07is not learned. It comes
5:10factory-installed. An animal without
5:12sodium seeks it with an urgency similar
5:14to that of thirst. Behind it are
5:18aldosterone, a hormone triggered when
5:21sodium drops, and angiotensin II, which
5:23acts on the areas of the brain linked
5:26to reward. Salt hunger is one of the
5:30most ancient impulses in mammals. So
5:34that Neolithic farmer who, after his
5:36barley porridge, felt the urge for
5:38something stronger and mineral-like,
5:40was answering that call without even
5:42knowing how to name it. And how did
5:47they find it? The answer seems obvious
5:51once you hear it by looking at animals.
5:56Herbivores have the same problem as
5:58farmers because plants are poor in
5:59sodium. That is why on every continent
6:03they seek out natural salt licks,
6:05places where salt surfaces above ground
6:08. British biologist Ian Redmond
6:11documented one of the most striking
6:13cases in Kitum Cave, on Mount Elgon.
6:18Elephants have been scraping the walls
6:20for so long that it is believed they
6:22excavated much of the cave themselves.
6:25Early humans followed those trails. It
6:28is hard to believe they wouldn't have
6:30noticed that certain herds always
6:32returned to the same spot, to lick
6:33stones or drink from a spring. Tasting
6:36that water or that earth was enough to
6:39feel that vivid, almost electric flavor
6:42the body was craving. But tasting salt
6:46is one thing, producing it is another,
6:48very different one. And here,
6:50archaeology is surprisingly precise.
6:54The oldest evidence of salt production
6:56in Europe comes from Poiana Slatinei,
6:59in northeastern Romania. French
7:03archaeologist Olivier Weller dates the
7:05activity to around 6050 BC, about 8,000
7:08years ago. A saltwater spring flows
7:11there. Those farmers collected the
7:15brine, poured it into large clay
7:17vessels, lit a fire underneath, and
7:19boiled it until the water disappeared.
7:23Solid salt remained at the bottom,
7:25something that could be stored, carried
7:28, and traded. The proof is in the
7:31pottery. Archaeologists call those
7:34crude, thick-walled containers meant
7:37only for producing salt "briquetage."
7:41They weren't tableware, they were work
7:43equipment, and thousands upon thousands
7:45of fragments have been found, a sign of
7:48constant, organized production by an
7:50entire community. In a very real sense,
7:54salt was one of humanity's first
7:56industries, and it did not appear in
7:58just one place. Near the city of
8:01Provadia, in Bulgaria, is Solnitsata,
8:04which means something like "salt pit."
8:08Archaeologist Vasil Nikolov of the
8:10Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has been
8:12excavating it since 2005. Salt was
8:16produced there from around 5500 BC, and
8:18over time the settlement became
8:20surrounded by thick stone walls.
8:24Nikolov describes it as the oldest
8:27fortified town in Europe, and nobody
8:29builds a defense like that to protect
8:32something not worth stealing. The site
8:35produced much more salt than its people
8:38could consume. The surplus went to
8:41trade, and here a very curious
8:43connection appears. About 35 km away is
8:47the Varna necropolis, discovered in
8:501972. In its tombs, more than 6 kg of
8:56gold objects from about 6,000 years ago
8:58were found, the oldest known worked
9:01gold. Several archaeologists, including
9:05Nikolov, believe that this wealth came
9:07from the salt trade of Solnitsata. If
9:11they are right, Europe's first fortunes
9:13were made by boiling brine. On the
9:17other side of the world, China had its
9:19own story. In Shanxi province is Lake
9:23Yuncheng, which provided salt without
9:25the need to boil or dig anything. The
9:29sun evaporated the water and the
9:31crystals formed on their own along the
9:32shores. Chinese texts date its
9:36exploitation back at least to the Xia
9:38Dynasty, some 4,000 years ago.
9:42Archaeologist Li Liu from Stanford
9:44University suggests that controlling
9:46resources like that lake may have
9:48influenced the formation of the first
9:50Chinese states. Whoever had the salt
9:53had the region. And in Azerbaijan, in a
9:57mountain called Duzdag, which means
10:00salt mountain, a Franco-Azerbaijani
10:03team led by Catherine Marro and Veli
10:05Bakhshaliyev found rock salt mines over
10:086,000 years old. Nobody boiled water
10:13there. They went underground with stone
10:16tools and cut the salt directly from
10:18the rock. In China, the sun did the
10:22work; in Romania and Bulgaria, fire; in
10:25Azerbaijan, stone and muscle. Peoples
10:29without contact with each other arrived
10:31at the same product in similar eras. It
10:34is what is called a convergent
10:36invention, like bread or pottery, where
10:39people started eating plants and felt
10:42the lack of sodium. They found a way to
10:46extract salt from what was nearby, and
10:49from then on, salt ceased to be just a
10:51nutrient and became technology because,
10:54besides adding flavor, it preserves.
10:58The mechanism is simple. Salt steals
11:00water from meat or fish. Scientists
11:04measure the water available for
11:06microbes on a scale from zero to one.
11:10Fresh meat is at almost one. Most
11:14bacteria need more than 0.91 to
11:17multiply. A well-salted and dried food
11:21can drop below 0.75 and almost nothing
11:25survives there. Before refrigeration
11:28and cans, salt was the only reliable
11:31way to keep food from rotting. Think
11:34about what that meant. Without salt,
11:37you would hunt an animal and have a few
11:39days to eat it. With salt, you could
11:43save autumn meat for winter, carry fish
11:46from the coast hundreds of kilometers
11:49inland, feed an army for months, or
11:52cross an ocean with a ship full of
11:55supplies. Salt turned the perishable
11:58into the durable. And what is durable
12:01can be sold, stored, collected as taxes
12:03, and used as a base of power.
12:06Furthermore, it made it possible to
12:08control fermentation. If you sprinkle
12:11chopped cabbage with between 2 and 3%of
12:14its weight in salt, the water comes out
12:16of the leaves and a brine is formed.
12:20That brine stops the microbes that rot
12:23the food and lets bacteria work that
12:25convert sugar into lactic acid. That is
12:29how German sauerkraut is born, and that
12:31is how Korean kimchi is born. Same
12:34principle, another continent. The
12:37Romans took this to an industrial scale
12:40with garum, a fermented fish sauce in
12:42lots of salt that was made all over the
12:45Mediterranean. Cheese needs salt to
12:49mature. Without it, there would be no
12:52cheese, ham, soy sauce, or pickles.
12:56Salt doesn't just preserve food; it
12:58creates entire categories of food. And
13:01something capable of all that, sooner
13:04or later, becomes power. In ancient
13:08Egypt, they used natron, a natural
13:10mixture of sodium salts, to dry out
13:13bodies during mummification. They would
13:17cover them with it for about 40 days.
13:19Herodotus described the process in the
13:225th century BC, and common salt served
13:26to preserve the Nile fish eaten by
13:28workers, including the pyramid builders
13:32. Rome had a road dedicated to it. The
13:37Via Salaria, one of Italy's oldest
13:39routes, carried salt from the salt pans
13:42near the Tiber's mouth inland and was
13:45already in use before Rome existed.
13:50Pliny the Elder linked the Latin word "
13:52salarium"—the origin of "salary"—to
13:54salt. Mind you, the idea that soldiers
13:58were paid in salt is a simplification.
14:02It was most likely a money allowance
14:04tied to buying salt, but the trace in
14:07our language is real. "Salad" comes
14:11from the Roman custom of seasoning
14:13vegetables with salt. "Sauce" comes
14:17from the Latin word for salt, and "
14:20sausage" from a term meaning salted
14:22meat. In China, salt became a state
14:26tool earlier than almost anywhere else.
14:32In 119 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han
14:34dynasty, on the advice of his minister
14:37Sang Hongyang, placed salt and iron
14:40under a state monopoly. The revenue
14:44paid for wars against the Xiongnu, the
14:46nomads of the northern border. It was
14:50so controversial that in 81 BC, a
14:52formal debate took place at court.
14:56Confucian scholars argued that the
14:58monopoly exploited common people and
15:00produced poor-quality goods. Officials
15:03replied that without that money, there
15:05was no way to defend the empire. A
15:09scholar named Huan Kuan recorded that
15:11discussion in the book "Discourses on
15:13Salt and Iron." It is one of the first
15:17documented debates on taxes and state
15:19control of basic goods over 2,000 years
15:22ago, and the subject was salt. Chinese
15:26technology also went far. In Sichuan,
15:30as early as the Han era, they drilled
15:32wells by striking the ground with
15:34iron-tipped bamboo poles to reach
15:36underground brine. Over the centuries
15:40in the Zigong area, those wells
15:42exceeded hundreds of meters, and the
15:44natural gas that escaped during
15:46drilling was piped through bamboo to
15:48fuel the fire that evaporated the water
15:50. The historian Joseph Needham
15:53documented this in his work "Science
15:55and Civilisation in China." For
15:58centuries, no one on the planet drilled
16:01so deep. In the Sahara, salt was traded
16:04for gold. Caravans connected mines like
16:08Taghaza, in the north of what is now
16:10Mali. A place so arid that the houses
16:13and mosque were built with salt blocks,
16:16linking it to the gold regions of West
16:19Africa. The Moroccan traveler Ibn
16:22Battuta passed through there in the mid
16:24-14th century. The salt was extracted
16:27by enslaved people under extremely
16:29harsh conditions. He crossed hundreds
16:31of kilometers of desert by camel and
16:33reached Timbuktu, where gold was
16:35abundant but salt was scarce. Some
16:38accounts say they were traded almost
16:40weight for weight. Mansa Musa, who
16:43ruled Mali in the 14th century,
16:45controlled those routes and amassed one
16:47of the greatest fortunes in history. In
16:50France, salt became a fiscal weapon.
16:54The Gabelle, a tax that became
16:56permanent in the 14th century under
16:58Philip VI, became so hated that it
17:01fueled a revolution. In some regions,
17:05salt cost more than 10 times its
17:07production price, and everyone over 8
17:09years old was required to buy a minimum
17:11amount annually from the king’s
17:13depots, whether they needed it or not.
17:17Smuggling flourished. And smugglers
17:20risked prison and even their lives. The
17:24Gabelle was among the grievances
17:26brought to the Estates-General of 1789
17:29and was abolished in 1790. Napoleon
17:34revived it in 1806 and it did not
17:37disappear completely until after World
17:40War II. In India, salt became a symbol
17:44of freedom. The British colonial
17:47government held a monopoly on its
17:49production and sale, reinforced by the
17:51Salt Act of 1882, and levied a tax that
17:55hit the poor above all else. On March
18:0012, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi left his
18:02ashram in Ahmedabad with 78 followers
18:05and walked nearly 400 km to Dandi on
18:08the coast. On April 6, he picked up a
18:13handful of natural salt from the mud on
18:15the shore, and with that small gesture,
18:17he violated British law. What followed
18:20was enormous. Tens of thousands of
18:23people imitated him, and more than
18:2560,000 were arrested. The Salt March
18:29became a decisive moment for Indian
18:30independence and served as a reminder
18:32of something empires had always known.
18:36Whoever controls the salt controls the
18:38people. Salt also gave its name to
18:41cities. Salzburg combines the German
18:44words for salt and fortress. Tuzla in
18:47Bosnia comes from the Turkish word for
18:49salt. Wieliczka in Poland has had an
18:52active mine since the 11th century.
18:56Lüneburg in Germany has lived off its
18:59deposits for over 1,000 years, and
19:01Hallstatt in Austria bears an ancient
19:04root linked to salt. When you pronounce
19:08the name of a city that hides the word
19:10"salt" in another language, you are
19:11actually saying out loud what that
19:13place lived on. Hallstatt deserves a
19:16separate stop. Salt has been mined
19:20there for over 3,000 years, and the
19:22place is so important that the entire
19:25first stage of the Iron Age in Europe
19:27is called the Hallstatt culture. But
19:31what is most amazing is what the salt
19:33preserved. In its galleries, wooden
19:37tools were preserved, axes with their
19:39handles, backpacks with leather straps,
19:42plaid fabrics, and shoes—things that
19:44in any other environment would have
19:46fallen apart. In 2021, a study in the
19:51journal Current Biology, involving
19:54researchers from the Natural History
19:56Museum of Vienna and the Eurac Research
19:59Institute in Italy, analyzed ancient
20:01miners 'excrement. In addition to
20:06cereals, beans, and fruits, in a sample
20:09from about 2,700 years ago, they found
20:12traces of blue cheese mold and beer
20:14yeast. One of the oldest pieces of
20:18evidence of ripened cheese in Europe
20:20was kept in the remains of a miner's
20:23lunch. And in 1734, some Hallstatt
20:29miners found a human body naturally
20:31mummified by the salt. Trapped for
20:34centuries in an ancient gallery. They
20:38buried it, and its trail was lost
20:40before science could study it. But the
20:44find summarizes what salt has always
20:46done. It stops time, whether in a fish
20:50or in a person. This was not exclusive
20:53to the Old World either. Archaeologist
20:57Heather McKillop of Louisiana State
21:00University found submerged Maya salt
21:03workshops in Belize from between 600
21:06and 900 AD, with wooden structures and
21:10pots for boiling brine preserved in the
21:13mangrove mud. The Aztecs extracted salt
21:17from the brackish water of Lake Texcoco
21:20. And throughout North America,
21:23indigenous peoples took advantage of
21:25salt licks, springs, and salt lakes.
21:28Wherever agriculture arrived, people
21:31sought and found salt. And now the
21:34story comes back to you, because this
21:36is happening in your mouth. When you
21:40eat something salty, sodium enters
21:42cells on your tongue and triggers a
21:44signal to the brain. If you lack sodium
21:48, the brain interprets it as something
21:50very pleasant. Dopamine is released,
21:52and you want more. If you already have
21:56enough, that same salt seems barely
21:58pleasant or even excessive. Your body
22:02adjusts in real time how much you like
22:04salt according to what it needs. It's
22:08not you who decides; it is your
22:10physiology that turns the knob. So,
22:13let's return to the question from the
22:15beginning. How did we discover salt?
22:19Actually, we didn't discover it the way
22:21you discover a tool. For almost our
22:23entire evolution it was invisible,
22:26dissolved in the blood and flesh of
22:28what we ate. The need was always there,
22:32etched into the body, but the meat kept
22:35it silent. Everything changed when our
22:38food changed. With agriculture, that
22:42quiet need became an urgent craving.
22:47People looked for salt where herbivores
22:49had always looked for it, recognized it
22:51, and learned to produce it
22:53independently in Romania, Bulgaria,
22:55China, Azerbaijan, and the Americas.
22:59each people with what their land gave
23:01them. There was no single inventor.
23:05Chemistry and the human body are the
23:07same everywhere, so salt was inevitable
23:10. And with that white crystal we built
23:15routes that crossed continents, cities
23:17that bear its name, empires that taxed
23:20it, and rebellions to break free from
23:22them. it left us words like salary,
23:27salad, sauce, and sausage. Right now,
23:30somewhere on the planet, someone is
23:32salting a piece of meat before putting
23:34it on the grill. Someone is sprinkling
23:37salt on a hard-boiled egg or wrapping a
23:39fish in coarse salt. They are all doing
23:42the same thing as that farmer by the
23:45spring in Romania 8,000 years ago, the
23:47same as the elephant in the cave in
23:49Kenya. They are replenishing a mineral
23:54their body cannot produce and without
23:55which it could not live, satisfying a
23:57craving older than our species. If it
24:02seems normal to you, it's only because
24:04you've done it every day of your life
24:06without asking where it comes from. If
24:11this story made you see salt in a
24:12different way, subscribe and tell me in
24:15the comments what other everyday food
24:17you want us to investigate in the next
24:19Leo.

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