I'm always a little shocked when I remember how rare spices used to be for much of the world. Even salt was a valuable commodity for an extremely long time.
I've been going the other way recently. How could it have been so tough to flavor dishes? Honey & frankincense might have been hard to come by, but oregano, basil, cilantro/coriander, cumin, parsley, anise, fennel, rosemary, tarragon, dill, chives, mint, and thyme (just off the top of my head) were all available in southern Europe and can mostly be grown in your kitchen.
The spice trade brought cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, black pepper, and turmeric.
> Herbs generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant (either fresh or dried), while spices are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits.
People confused can look up the definition of herbs and spices.
>Where herbs are often chosen to complement and flatter the ingredients they adorn, spices call attention to themselves, transforming and sometimes even usurping a dish, so it becomes a mere vehicle and excuse for spice itself.
Both are true. Herbs do have a much milder flavor than spices on the whole and they're from different plant parts! There are multiple ways to classify things.
Similarly (and unsurprisingly, given that many are made from spices), pigments. I recently read "The Secret Lives of Color" by Kasia St. Clair, and its pretty remarkable what has been required to produce various pigments throughout history, and the costs associated with doing so.
Transporting any significant quantity of sea water would have been a serious challenge to the ancient world, even just from the shore in to the middle of a port city. The easiest way to transport water is downhill, which, alas, doesn't work so well if you're starting from sea level.
You can get water from the seashore just by evaporating it. It's simple, effective, and was done. But it's a lot more convenient to swing a pick and get a chunk of salt the size of your hand, rather than secure somewhere to evaporate off water, load it up, wait for it to evaporate, and collect it. It's the same reason we're stuck on fossil fuels... it's not that they're the only method we have for obtaining energy, it's just that nothing else can compete with putting in 1 unit of energy and getting back 80 or 90.
"For a society without trains or trucks, moving bulk materials of any kind over long distances is extraordinarily expensive. Moving grain overland, for instance, would cause its cost to double after 100 miles."
Salt differs from other spices in a couple obvious ways:
1. It is a rock, not a biological product.
2. It is not used primarily for flavoring (though salt in specific has a strong flavor) -- it is a vital nutrient in its own right.
With the exception of the flavoring, it has those things in common with iron, and iron and salt are the two commodities which were always widely traded, even in areas which engaged in almost no nonlocal trade.
It was valuable everywhere because it was used for more than just flavoring and even if it was just for flavoring some things you would want to add salt to you don't want to also add water to. Salt water also comes with all the microbial content that would make long term storage and transport difficult.
