Education·14 June 2026·4 min read
Salt — the money behind the word "salary"
Before coins, people used rare and useful things as money: salt, shells, cattle. Here's where the word "salary" comes from.
Long before gold, money was useful things that were hard to obtain. Salt was one of them — essential for preserving food and sometimes as precious as gold. Roman soldiers received part of their pay in salt, and from the Latin salarium comes today's word "salary".
Money from shells and cattle
Elsewhere in the world, money was cowrie shells, cocoa beans or cattle. The word "pecuniary" comes from the Latin pecus = cattle. They all had something in common: they were scarce, desired and accepted by everyone. Exactly the ingredients that turn anything into "money".
