Consider the convenience of salt. Only two centuries ago, salt was a high-cost item that involved intensive human labor even in the most advanced civilizations. An example of a native American saltworks has been newly documented by the U.S. Geological Survey in the Sierra Nevada of California. It consisted of several hundred basins, each the size of a card table, carved knee-deep into solid rock. Each basin represents a year's labor of pounding the rock, softened by fire, with stones to make a giant version of the typical rock mortar.
A group of Miwok Indians came each year to fill these basins with water from a rare salt spring nearby, watch the sun evaporate them over the summer months, then scrape up the salt crystals from the bottom. But that annual harvest paid off better than gold, as salt was the most important trade good in prehistoric California. Other salt deposits—in the Coast Range or over the mountain crest in the Nevada desert—were a week's walk away. The saltworks are described in today's San Francisco Chronicle (and mentioned much earlier by blogger James Bruggers), but the original USGS report is here.
More on salt:
About Salt
Salt, A World History by James Kurlansky (#9 in the book list)
Salt links and resources
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