China
In 6000 B.C. humans were gathering salt around Lake Yuncheng in the arid northern province of Shanxi. Documents dating back to the Xia dynasty indicate that in the millenium before 800 B.C. salt was being produced putting water in clay containers and boiling the water until it was reduced to salt crystals. Li Bing (a hydraulic engineer of the third century B.C. honoured by a stamp by the People's Republic of China on November 20, 1980) developed the world's first brine wells in Sichuan. In the centuries that followed the salt producers discovered that the same gases that rose from the wells and sometimes poisoned salt workers or caused explosions could be channeled through bamboo pipes and used to fuel the fires beneath the salt pans. China's 1980 stamp depicting "Salt Making" in a Tung Han Dynasty Mural 250 B.C.-220 A.D. found near Chengdu documents the elaborate process of producing salt.
Go to the Salty Stamps Home Page. © Derrick Grose, 2023 |
