Salt, Trade, and Disease: Aspects of Development in Africa's Northern Great Lakes Region

Salt is one of the oldest raw materials known to man, perhaps the first chemical substance to be perceived as an essential resource. The antiquity of the habitual human craving for salt is partly reflected in the host of deeply-rooted beliefs concerning its necessity for physiological and psychological well-being.2 Since the Neolithic and perhaps much earlier, the irregular distribution of natural sources of salt, and hence its varying accessibility, have had consequences for human organization which transcend conventional implications of supply and demand. Indeed, although salt held the preeminent position in world trade for many centuries,3 the ordinary activities associated with its procurement and exchange often seem secondary in importance when compared with its widespread use as a standard of valuation, its influence on migration and settlement patterns, its role in shaping political and military relations, and its richly varied symbolic significance.4 Salt was a divine substance to Homer, and Plato associated it closely with the gods.5