Ethiopia's Extreme Salt Mines

Ethiopia's Extreme Salt Mines - Northern Ethiopia's Afar Depression also called the Danakil Depression is one of the hottest places on Earth. Parts of the region are more than 300 feet below sea level, forming a cauldron where temperatures reach above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and active volcanoes roil. 

Salt of The Earth

The colorful and extreme Afar is also home to a valuable commodity: salt. For centuries the Afar people have mined rich salt deposits left behind from Red Sea floods in the region most recently, 30,000 years ago. Today, workers cut slabs of salt from the earth and pack them on to camels for a days-long journey across the desert to a market town where the slabs are sold to merchants and loaded on to trucks. 

Here a man walks across a crusty landscape of sulfur and mineral salt near Dallol, a town that has been called the hottest inhabited place on earth. 

Camel Delievery
In the town of Berahile, Ethiopia, workers unload slabs of salt harvested from deposits in the Afar depression. Since the Middle Ages, camels have been used to haul salt in Africa. These caravans of camels bring the salt across the desert to the market town where it is sold to traders and loaded on to trucks.

Salty Shipment
"Transportation was always the key to the salt business," writes Mark Kurlansky in Salt: A World History. The journey of the Afar salt continues in Berahile, Ethiopia. Slabs of salt brought to the town on the backs of camels are loaded on to trucks.

Worth His Salt
Stacks of salt bars surround a man in Mekele, Ethiopia. The town is an important part of the salt trade route in Ethiopia. Salt sold here is distributed around the country.

White Gold
A man readies a single block of salt, called an amole, for the market in Mekele, Ethiopia. As in many other parts of the world, salt was once used as a form of currency in Ethiopia.

Source: NGCNews

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