Chapter 2: Alchemists and the Discoverys of Salt

The title of being a scientist hasn’t been around forever, but the idea of scientists has been. This idea was to understand the world to make human lives easier. They may have been called different things like witches, shamans, sorcerers, priests, and other things. Doing things like making ovens, bread, bow and arrows, and inventing math are all types of science. The name for these people weren’t scientists until the 18th century, they were called alchemists. The first alchemists were in Egypt. These alchemists wanted to know the reason for living and dying and what happens after someone is mummified. These alchemists thought that everything was a part of god or the divine. Their job was to understand it. They were all trying to reach the Philosopher’s Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone wasn’t an actual stone it was the state of the world being perfect. That everyone would live a long life, there would be no disease, and materials could be turned into gold.

Not only in Egypt the Asian alchemists were trying to reach this goal too. They thought there was a substance that someone could drink and would reverse their aging. One of the people trying to make it ended up creating the first ever fireworks. He used a salt found on the walls of some of the Chinese buildings this salt later was found to be potassium nitrate, sulfur, and honey to moisten the mixture. The mixture then was put on heat and blew up. It produced beautiful flames which later they could change into different colors. They called it “fire drug”. They also later exchanged honey for charcoal. The mixture would blow up very fast and then it quickly disappeared the alchemists were amazed by it. The alchemists decided to do more tests and the people would say that the alchemist would come out with burnt faces, hands, and sometimes the houses would burn down. The funny thing about this discovery was it was suppose to help people, but it ended up killing. Many of the Chinese thought to use this when fighting an enemy. They would put it in tubes (the tubes were made from bamboo because the bamboo made the substance explode) and shoot it out into the enemy's faces. This was known as the first fire crackers. When the middle ages came the “fire drug” was all around the world. It became more dangerous and known as saltpeter in the west. The west used this as what we know today as gunpowder.

Gun Powder

This changed everything. These guns could kill armored knights and shoot down armies. There were problems with gunpowder though because there wasn’t enough of it because of the salt shortage. After everything was taken the salt would grow back, but at agonizingly slow paces.

Sodium nitrate growing on a wall

The people growing the salt were called the petermen. Where ever they found salt didn’t matter where they had to take it peacefully or by force. This was stilled not enough supply for the king. He wanted more so they made plantations to grow salt in unnatural conditions. These plantations were made of trenches lined with clay. Then in the clay was put things like soil, garbage, ashes, and manure. The piles then were dampened by piles or urine and sewage. The salt would grow in a few months because it was crusted by the sun. King Charles the First made a decree that everyone has to keep the urine and the leftovers from meals (like carcusses and other gross stuff) and donate to the salt plantations. So these salt plantations were the first compost boxes. All of this salt making was still not enough even though there were some salt deposits found around the world for example India had the largest one.

This saltpeter lead to another discovery when a group of indians were moving from the Andes mountains to a village near the pacific. They decided to set up camp for the night. Since it was cold out they built a fire out of dried up cactus. The fire that was on the cactus lit the ground on fire too. They were very frightened that the devil did this. So they all ran while on took some of the dirt to give to a priest. The priest was very smart and knew about chemistry and said that the dirt had a salt close to saltpeter, but couldn’t be made into gunpowder. This salt could still light on fire though. The travelers than carried on and the dirt was thrown outside. Then weeks later the priest went outside and saw that a very nice plant had grown out of it. It was very green and healthy looking. The priest then told a naval officer than was visiting. Finally two things happened it created more plantations in the town for this salt because even though it was not as good as saltpeter it could make cannon fire. The second thing that happened was a new fertilizer was made. This story is just a legend though.