Salt
Boiling brine at Solnitsata in Bulgaria produces the first industrial commodity.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2.2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 300 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
From around 5500 BCE the settlement at Provadia-Solnitsata evaporates brine from a salt spring in ceramic vessels, producing salt on a scale far beyond local need. Salt preserves meat and fish, which decouples eating from the season of slaughter, and it is scarce inland. The wealth it generated is a plausible explanation for the gold at nearby Varna. Fortification walls appear at Solnitsata early, which is what a valuable commodity tends to attract.