8 August 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Salt May Have Been Used as Money in Exchanges

Salt has always been a precious metal. Salt was needed in many areas, from the preservation of food to the taste of the food, to the feeding of animals, to its use in the field of health. Wars broke out for salt. Access to salt provided the advantage.

Described by Homer as a “sacred substance”, salt has also been used as a means of payment in shopping because it is a rare and troublesome product. Such that, In the Roman Empire, legionnaires’ salaries were made with salt. The English salary word “Salary” comes from salt money given to legions.

Salt gods stand out in North American culture. Many North American Indians are known to worship salt gods, often female. In America, salt was a very important product like other Asian and European countries.

Archaeologists discovered a striking 2500-year-old mural on the Mayan ruins in Calakmul, Yucatan, Mexico, depicting the salt exchange between buyers and sellers. This is the earliest record of salt as a commodity.

No wonder that salt played a major economic role in the ancient Maya as well. Archaeologists led by Heather McKillop of Louisiana State University recently documented an ancient Calakmul fresco in which a salt seller distributes salty dough wrapped in leaves to another person. The latter holding a large spoon over the basket.

Since 2004, Mckillop has uncovered a wealth of archaeological evidence relating to the salt trading networks of the ancient Maya. These include the remains of “salt kitchens”, buildings made of posts and straw that had been submerged and preserved in the saltwater lagoons of the mangrove forests of Belize.

Mayans, like the Romans, used salt as money.
Mayans, like the Romans, used salt as money.

Until today, Researchers have mapped 70 sites, including an extensive network of rooms and buildings called the Paynes Creek Salt Works.

This must have been an industrial-scale operation, as the archaeologists have identified 4,042 submerged architectural wooden posts, a canoe, an oar, a high-quality jadeite tool, stone tools used to salt fish and meat, and hundreds of pieces of pottery.

Alongside this recently described mural, this evidence suggests that salt cakes were transported in canoes along the coast and up rivers in southern Belize, the researchers wrote in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

“I think the ancient Maya who worked here were producer-vendors and they would take the salt by canoe up the river. They were making large quantities of salt, much more than they needed for their immediate families. This was their living,” said McKillop in a statement.

Two of McKillop’s students even replicated some of the ancient Maya pottery using a 3d printer based on scans taken in Belize of some of the hundreds of pieces of pottery investigated at the site. This confirmed that the ceramic jars in which the Maya boiled the brine were standardized in volume.

“Produced as homogeneous units, salt may have been used as money in exchanges,” McKillop said.

Cover Photo: entrepreneur.com

Related Articles

Spectacular Marble Portrait and Untouched Grave Found at Bulgaria’s Heraclea Sintica

5 July 2025

5 July 2025

Ongoing rescue excavations at the ancient Roman site of Heraclea Sintica in southwestern Bulgaria continue to deliver extraordinary finds, with...

Two Infant burials found under prehistoric “Dragon Stone” in Armenia

4 June 2024

4 June 2024

An international team of researchers has unearthed the remains of an adult woman and two infants buried under a basalt...

Historic bath set to turn into gastronomy gallery

4 May 2024

4 May 2024

Built between 1520 and 1540 in the Sur district of the eastern province of Diyarbakır, the historic Çardaklı Hamam is...

Unprecedented Large Burial Urns in the Amazon May Reveal a Previously Unknown Indigenous Tradition

21 June 2025

21 June 2025

A remarkable archaeological discovery in the heart of the Amazon—seven giant funerary urns buried beneath a fallen tree—is offering fresh...

Researchers solve the mystery of Mayan 819-day calendar

24 April 2023

24 April 2023

Researchers at Tulane University in Louisiana have solved the mystery of the 819-day ancient Mesoamerican calendar used by ancient Mayans....

Archaeologists discover complete armored 14th-century gauntlet in Switzerland

18 January 2024

18 January 2024

Excavations in Kyburg in the canton of Zürich, northeastern Switzerland have discovered a 14th-century fully preserved gauntlet of armor in...

A 42,000-year-old pendant found in northern Mongolia may be the earliest known phallic art

20 June 2023

20 June 2023

An international team of researchers has found a pendant in northern Mongolia that may be the earliest known example of...

Army Museum Worker Discovers Early Medieval Sword While Swimming in a Polish River

19 December 2024

19 December 2024

The collection of the Army Museum in Białystok, Poland has been enriched after renovation with a unique relic of great...

Unique work of Minoan art, the Pylos Combat Agate must be the David of the Prehistoric era

21 November 2021

21 November 2021

Found in a Greek tomb dating back 3,500 years, the artifact is so well designed that it looks as lively...

Paleontologists have discovered a new species of giant rhino

18 June 2021

18 June 2021

Paleontologists studying in China have found a new species of gigantic rhinoceros, the world’s biggest land animal. According to a...

5,700-Year-old Ancient “Chewing Gum” Gives Information About People and Bacteria of the Past

4 April 2021

4 April 2021

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have successfully extracted the complete human genome from “chewing gum” thousands of years ago....

Restoration Complete: Athena Temple in Side Reopens to the Public

24 March 2025

24 March 2025

The Athena Temple, once overshadowed by the more prominent Temple of Apollo, has emerged as a significant historical and cultural...

New Insights From Researchers About The World’s Longest Aqueduct

11 May 2021

11 May 2021

The Roman Empire’s aqueducts are magnificent specimens of the art of architecture. Although centuries have passed since these aqueducts were...

Ancient Egyptian silos and administrative buildings uncovered at Kom Ombo in Egypt’s Aswan

6 March 2022

6 March 2022

The Egyptian-Austrian archaeological mission working in the Temple of Kom Ombo in Egypt’s southern province of Aswan unearthed an administrative...

Evidence of Intentional Roman Use of Narcotic Seeds, Found in Bone Vessel in the Netherlands

8 February 2024

8 February 2024

Archaeologists have discovered the first conclusive evidence of the existence of a hallucinogenic and poisonous plant thought to have been...