At first, when we were given a book on salt, I was sort of worried. Salt is a food, and food is really and truly awesome, but a whole book on one seasoning seemed rather excessive. Also, salt reminds me of several particularly irritating chemistry labs, but I'll not get into that. Fortunately, my worries were actually unnecessary, because salt hasn't always been so commonplace. The poor ancient Chinese did not have potato chips at the nearest store, so salt had a whole other meaning for them that it does for people today.
It's a little ironic that a substance that people today are told to cut back on was so lacking in ancient people's diets. Today barely-salted health food may be the way to go, but the Chinese realized that they needed salt to stay healthy, it was an important money maker for the government, and the price of salt changed with the economy. In a way, salt was like ancient gasoline. They fought with wars over it, and even had to drill for it like they had to drill for oil. In some ways, things haven't really changed much over the past few thousand years, although until people have to pay taxes in gasoline, I suppose it could get much worse.
In other ways, it's astonishing how quickly the ancient Chinese were able to change their ways of thinking. For example, Li Bing took only four hundred years to go from being a governor to a flood god. That would be like people today worshiping the Puritans or the residents of Jamestown, and really the closest people come to that is celebrating Thanksgiving. Another impressively quick turn-around was their view on natural gas. It went from being a demon to a source of energy in about two hundred years. That is ancient ingenuity at its finest.
The Best Is Yet to Come Film à Regarder
4 years ago
7 comments:
Uh! I thought of chemistry too!
One thing that you said about the natural gas I found pretty interesting as well! I mean it did take 200 years to go from demon to source of energy, but still they got it figured out.
First of all, don't even talk about chemistry! Other than that, great connection about salt and gasoline. Today there are wars over gasoline much the same way there were wars fought over salt.
Yeah, I think it is really funny how the Chinese thought salt was a great gift from god, and the world today is telling us that salt is bad and we shouldn't eat it. It's funny how the world's opinion is so different now. I like how you made the comparrision with drilling salt to drilling oil, I did not think of that before.
I can't even imagine having salt being something special and great. It's salt... I put it outside in giant blocks for my horses to lick whenever they please. Good to see that salt has come a long way. I can't imagine fighting a war over salt. We have wars with terrorists now. How strange would it be to fight over salt? People would be losing their lives so others could pickle vegetables! I think freedom is a much better cause, personally. I hope nobody loses their life over a condiment any time soon!
Dale, Dale, Dale, you just had to put that amazing clase of chemistry in your blog didn't you. haha. Anyways that was a great connection about salt and gasoline and I did not even think of that until you wrote it. That was a very well thought idea. Yeah, well like corinne said there is all that talk about gasoline and oil and war being fought over it. I guess that was the same way back then with salt.
Yep we all have chemistry on the mind. You made very interesting connections that i would have never thought of. The drilling is a problem now as it was back then no matter if it's salt or oil. As now some countries have a better supply than others. Some countries are just consumers and some are also producers.
Yeah, most teens look at a book based on Salt as like, "The teacher has flipped his lid." but once you read a few chapters into it, you will see that Kurlanski uses this material much like Gold or Silver to show how valuable it was in the old world, and just how much we take it for granted today.
Salt was used much more as a preservative back in those days, before families had a fridge.
I like the analogy to Gas. Never thought if it that way before.
Great insights
Mr. Farrell
Post a Comment