Plateau was ancient salt-making site

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Recordnet.com
By Dana M. Nichols
Record Staff Writer

SAN ANDREAS - Hundreds of basins carved into a football field-sized granite ledge in a remote Sierra Nevada wilderness are the remains of what may be the oldest manufacturing operation in North America, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study whose results were released in December.

The researchers concluded that the more than 350 basins three to four feet in diameter were used to evaporate salt from the briny flow of a nearby spring.

"The water was carried to the individual basins, probably in water-tight baskets, where it dried in the summer heat, leaving a salt residue on the basin floor," said Jim Moore, USGS geologist and co-author of the report.

"Such a large enterprise produced far more salt than was needed by the local tribe for cooking, preserving food, and attracting animals for hunting, and they had a large surplus of the valuable item left over for trade with other tribes." Moore and other researchers estimate the site could have produced about 2.5 tons of salt per year. (emphasis added)

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100103/A_NEWS/1030314#STS=g41uekl4.1jz5

[XemaSab]

1. Very cool

:D

[aquart]

2. Who first decided to use salt? How? Why?

So many ancient acts of courage. Nobody is ever impressed with Eve for trying that apple.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. The use of salt probably comes from the practice of burying meat to

keep scavangers away from it, then coming back to it a few days later, cutting away the really bad stuff and cooking the rest. If someone buried meat in a salt basin, or salt flat, when they dug it up they found it preservered. A little experimenting and they teach themselves how to preserve meat by packing it in salt. Suddenly that white dirt becomes very valuable.

[aquart]

4. "White dirt." And it's not a pejorative.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. LOL.

The ones I don't understand are like with tapioca - which if not cooked properly, and if eaten raw, is poisonous. How'd they figure THAT one out?

[aquart]

6. TAPIOCA IS POISONOUS??

My PUDDING???????

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. Yep. From Wiki:

The cassava plant can have either red or green with blue spindle pulls branches. The toxin found in the root of the red-branched variant is less harmful to humans than the green-branched variety. Therefore, while the root of the red/purple-branched variant can be consumed directly, the root of the green-branched variant requires treatment to remove the toxin. Konzo (also called mantakassa) is a paralytic disease associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava.

[aquart]

8. Ye freaking gods!

What's in my PUDDING?

[FarCenter]

9. Watch the animals -- see them use salt licks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_lick