Common salt, or sodium chloride, has always been a strategic resource of primary importance. In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica salt was used mainly for human consumption, as the native diet (consisting mainly of plants such as maize, beans, chili peppers, and squash) had little chloride and sodium (Williams, 2003). Chloride is essential for digestion and respiration, and without sodium our organism would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen or transmit nerve impulses. Throughout the world, once human beings began cultivating crops, they began looking for salt to add to their diet (Kurlansky, 2002, pp. 6–9).
In the preindustrial world, sodium chloride had several important uses apart from its role in the diet, particularly as preservative of animal flesh, as a mordant for fixing textile dyes, as a medium of exchange, and as a principal component in the preparation of soaps and cleansing agents (Parsons, 1994, p. 280).
An ancient technology where salt was very important was textile...
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Williams, E. (2016). Salt Production in Mesoamerica. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9642
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