The oldest salt water exploitation in the world is in Romania

By RBJ
The archaeological heritage of Neamţ county, in the north-east of Romania, has many archaeological sites of European and even world importance, which have aroused the interest of specialists from many countries.
This is also the case of the well-known spring from Lunca – Poiana Slatinei, which still maintains its status as the oldest saltwater exploitation in the world.
Archaeologist Dr. Vasile Diaconu, specialist within the Neamţ National Museum Complex, presented, for Agerpres, a series of extremely interesting information about the importance of this historical objective.
He explained, first of all, why a saltwater spring is so special.
“It is well known that salt is a necessary mineral for the human and animal diet, but it also has a whole series of other domestic uses. But salt is not found everywhere, and people, since very ancient times, have made intense efforts to procure this resource. The area at the foot of the Carpathians, so including the Neamţ region, has such sources, which appear in the form of more or less abundant springs, with different salinity,” said archaeologist Vasile Diaconu.
The researcher pointed out that the exploitation of the spring from Lunca – Poiana Slatinei has a very interesting story, which begins almost 8,000 years ago.
“With the establishment of the first communities of sedentary farmers (in the early Neolithic) in the Neamţ area, they were the first to discover and exploit the source of salty water from Lunca. In fact, a small Neolithic community or part of a community used seasonally this salty spring, not only for own consumption, but also for trade. Thus, after it was taken out of the spring, the water was boiled on the spot, in clay vessels, obtaining in this way the crystallized salt, which, in a solid state and very concentrated, it could be transported over long distances, to areas where this mineral was not found”, said the researcher.
The archaeological site in the immediate vicinity of the spring from Lunca – Poiana Slatinei was discovered at the beginning of the years, and in 1984, coordinated archaeological research began here.
The researcher Vasile Diaconu explained that the archaeological remains from Lunca were of interest to the Romanian scientific community, but also to the European one, so that well-known foreign researchers, such as A. Harding, J. Chapman, O. Weller, participated in the archaeological excavations of here, also facilitating various interdisciplinary investigations.
A few weeks ago, as part of a scientific event organized by the Neamţ National Museum Complex, the Lunca spring, as well as other archaeological sites in the Târgu Neamţ area, were visited by archaeologists from Germany, Poland and Ukraine, attracted by the archaeological importance of this area.