Before refrigeration, salt was the only way to stop time

Kurlansky opens from the basic biological and culinary fact that drove salt's historic importance: without refrigeration, salt was essentially the only reliable way to preserve meat, fish, and vegetables for months or years, making it as essential to survival as the food itself. A society's ability to store food through winters or lean seasons — and a military's ability to provision armies on long campaigns — depended directly on adequate salt supplies.

This single fact explains why salt access could determine whether a settlement could grow into a city, or an army could march beyond a few weeks from home. Fish preserved in salt, in particular, allowed for entire economies and trade networks to develop around long sea voyages and distant markets, since catches no longer had to be consumed immediately or lost to spoilage.

Kurlansky uses this foundational point to explain why, throughout most of human history, salt wasn't a seasoning at all — it was closer to what oil or electricity is to a modern economy: a background necessity whose absence could halt everything else.

Takeaway: salt wasn't flavor first, it was infrastructure — the technology that let food outlast time.