Gold is a beautiful, precious metal, coveted by many world cultures throughout history. But what if you had bigger problems? Salt was a crucial mineral to food preservation techniques once societies left the hunter-gatherer stage. This factor led to the Gold-Salt Route, when the Akan people of Ghana found themselves with plentiful gold, but no salt. How did Salt become as valuable as gold to this civilization?
Fig. 1 - Saharan Trade Routes 1400.
Gold-Salt Trade Definition
The Gold-Salt trade was the trade of sub-Saharan African gold for salt from the Sahara to the north. In this trade, the value of precious metals was placed against a substance that preserves life itself. Through this trade, the complex trade networks of the African continent developed.
Gold-Salt Trade: The trade of gold and salt between Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa.
Factors Of Gold-Salt Trade
The empire of Ghana was plentiful with gold. The precious resource may have been highly valued, but the lack of a local salt supply was a more pressing issue. The harsh conditions of the northern Sahara desert made life difficult, but its natural salt deposits were valuable.
As civilizations developed from hunter-gatherers into agrarian societies, salt became even more essential to life. Salt helped with humans retaining water in the warm African climate. Salt was used to preserve food for later consumption, in a time long before the advent of refrigeration. Lastly, salt simply improved the taste of food.
As the people of Ghana converted to an agrarian one, their diet became more limited. Hunter-gatherer societies consume whatever food they come across in the varied flora and fauna of their region. Agrarian societies focus on a handful of crops or types of cattle that respond well to cultivation in their area. This limited diet reduced the amount of natural salt consumed through various foods, and no local replacement was available.
Gold-Salt Trade Route
The route of the Gold-Salt trade connected Gianna to the Sahara. Numerous intermediaries facilitated the trade across the African continent. The difficulty of the journey could end with salt literally worth its weight in gold.
Fig. 2 - Salt Deposits in the Sahara Desert.
Taoudenni
The indispensable writings of Arab scholar and traveler Ibn Battuta relay to us much of what we know today of the medieval world outside of Europe. He provides a thorough description of a bleak salt mining town named Taoudenni in the Sahara. He describes a population of enslaved people, laboring in mines to excavate large pieces of rock salt. Even the dwellings and mosques of Taoudenni were constructed of salt slabs, with camel skin roofs.
Ghana
During a brief two-month span at the beginning of the spring rainy season, the people of Ghana mined for gold. Women and children panned for gold dust in the streams. The men took on much more dangerous work, digging tunnels to mine underground gold deposits. Because no reinforcements were built into the mining tunnels, they frequently collapsed, killing the miners. Although the kings of Ghana were renowned for their plentiful gold, an average gold panner only accumulated around one ounce of gold every season.
A gold panner was a manual laborer involved in gold mining, who employed a pan for that purpose of collect and sift the mineral with it.
Salt to Ghana
The domesticated camel was the mode of transportation for Saharan salt. As many as thousands of camels, each loaded with up to 400 pounds of salt slabs, made the journey in a single caravan. They arrived at intermediate trading posts, where the salt was traded for necessities of life in the brutal Saharan desert, as well as decorative items such as gold and ivory. These intermediate trading villages cut up the slabs, often weighing up to 200 pounds, to distribute along rivers or to carry on foot to Ghana.
These trading posts included towns such as Djenne and Timbuktu.
The long, perilous journey through the desert was very expensive. By the time the salt reached the more remote areas of Ghana, its value could raise to be equal to that of gold.
Trade Scales
As with many trading partners, ideas were traded as much as goods. The northern traders introduced the use of scales to Ghana, which they quickly made their own. Those trading would haggle over what weight of gold would be traded for what weight of another item. The people of Ghana brought their own known weights to measure against. This known weight was placed on one side of a scale, with the item traded on the other, to accurately determine the desired amount.
The people of Ghana made the weights their own in the truest sense. The use of sculpted figures for weights became an art form of its own. Figures of fish or birds were commonly made.
One unique element of Ghana's trade practices was called "The Silent Trade." An Arab trader recorded in the eleventh century that the buyer and seller never met face to face! The kingdom of Ghana fiercely protected its border from outsiders, not allowing traders into its center. Traders were instructed to stop at a certain point, where they would lay out their items on display and leave. In the trader's absence, the people of Ghana would make offers by placing gold next to items. When the trader was allowed to return, he would decide to accept or reject the offers.
Benefits of Gold-Salt Trade
One of the primary benefits of the trade was the preservation of life in Ghana. Things like steady supplies of salt, good crop yields, and access to clean water were not guarantees at the time, and in many places in the world are not today. Economically, the trade enriched all involved. Cities are recorded as having taxed goods both coming in to and leaving out of a city. This heavy trade taxation provided a stable income base to these areas.
Although the trade benefitted Ghana for hundreds of years, it eventually led to their downfall. The wealth of its kings had become legendary. This made Ghana a target for attacks from outside forces seeking to gain that wealth. Eventually, these attacks weakened Ghana enough that it was absorbed into the Mali empire in the thirteenth century.
Silk Road and the African Gold-Salt Trade
Both the Silk Road and the African Gold-Salt trade were networks of exchange. The two networks were not necessarily the same, but both had the effect of allowing exchange of ideas in the medieval world. When people travelled along these trade routes, they also brought new ideas with them. In this way, the two routes were similar.
Fig. 3 - Silk Road Route
Gold-Salt Trade - Key takeaways
- Salt was important to life in an agrarian society for its ability to preserve and season food
- Ghana was very short on locally available salt
- Ghana's gold was traded for salt
- Eventually, the high taxation on trade in Ghana led to attacks from invaders seeking to pillage its riches.
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