History·19 March 2026·4 min read
Amole — the salt bars that were money in Ethiopia
Until the 20th century, in Ethiopia people paid with salt bars cut to standard sizes.
In Ethiopia, for centuries, people used salt bars called amole as money, cut to a standard size. Salt was essential and hard to obtain — therefore valuable.
Money you could eat
The salt bars had both a real value (you could use it) and an exchange value. The farther you carried salt from where it was made, the more it was worth — the money embodied the cost of transport.
