Some historians claim that the fall of the Ipadian Civilisation came because the elite grew distance from the poor. But no matter how much wealth they had they couldn't eat printer ink and thus where easy pickings for the revolutionaries to siege them out from their villas.
Exactly why I like this channel more as well. Sure something on weapons and armor is nice once in a while. But there is more to the ancient world than armies rampaging through the land...
Next time someone says to me "You know, in the ancient world, salt was more valuable than gold?" I'll say "Yeah, that's why ancient coins were made of salt."
There's a difference between fiat money (which represents value held elsewhere, commonly gold) and hard money (made from actual value, commonly gold or silver).
my mind just blow up becourse i saw Skall and than again bec. somebodey used a monty python joke , i am in the right place here :D PS sry for the english i´m sill learning it ^^
I am astounded at how they produced this video. they appear to be at different frame rates and in different lighting environments. earned my thumbs up as soon as they exchanged the arrow
"Salt is more valuable than gold because the Mali Empire traded gold for salt" Because gold was *money.* That's like saying Walmart discount DVDs are more valuable then the US Dollar because you pay for them with cash
@@davidkazira6060 I finally got an explanation for how that worked. The gold mines were in a tropical climate, they were basically impossible to operate without a lot of salt because salt helped the miners retain more water in the heat. Still probably wasn't healthy, but if you're sweating buckets, you need both lots of water and lots of salt. The salt was mostly on the north, the gold was mostly in the south, so the trade developed along those lines and just kept extending.
Funny that people said gold is valuable yet they still value gold based on paper money...which is nothing more than paper...which an accepted worth solely by general consensus.
Used to be paper money was valued in gold actually; but I think they changed it because of the infrastructure you'd need to hold all the gold you need to in order to keep your money valuable; what with credit and banks being dicks and whatnot
pered5 Yes and similar like all paper money in history, it's all heading towards an inevitable crash---but that we could discuss on other youtube video that explain the issue. You might like to read about ancient china, japan, egypt and sumeria where they use grain as medium of payment. Maybe it's not true cash but the government during that era use a concept of yearly stipend where they pay an amount of grain (wheat, barley, rice) to government officials. Simpler times than our present monetary system that we are plagued with now.
I couldn't tell if they were actually in the sape room, skallagrim looked slightly jankier and they never touched the same objects, if you pay attention to the arrows they always 'hand them over' out of shot
+alfred mason-fayle cleary skallagrim on a green screen. notice their lighting areqite different? especially appereant when they are waving swords, it reflect at different angle/spot + brigtness is also different
+Neko Nomi well yes, obviously he was on a green screen. It actually makes it more impressive in my opinion, think of the timing and the scripting! Really well done.
In the 16th or 17th century there was a Hungarian nobleman - the exact time and the guy's name escapes me right now - who was told that he can marry a particular lady if he will take her home on a horse-drawn sledge - in summer. He responded with purchasing the entire stock of the salt mines of Máramaros, Transylvania and covered the road with it between the two places. Then he actually took her on a sledge ride. Let's hope she was worth it...
wasn't about marriage...was about empress Maria-Theresia coming to visit the duke of esterhazy at his palace in hungary and he wished to entertain her with a sledge ride in summer
+g00dn4m3 I suspect you could be right in a sense. If you imagine all the diamond trading in the world, and all the lumber trading, which one would be sold more? The wood, because it was used for so much, where as diamonds are pretty rocks...they...um...look nice? The fact is wood was more usefull, there was a larger market for it and therefore the total profit would probably of been higher. On another note, I think the current price of diamond is only so high because of a monopoly on their mining and refining. Not exactly sure of this, but it would seem a tad odd that a formation of one of the most common elements on the planet is so rare. In conclusion, usefullness > pretty rock.
i think there was a discussion on scholagladiatoria quite a while back just about that. thing is: both lloyd and matt are over six foot and skall is not; unlike in the drawing the discussion was about. he's not small, but he is compared to lloyd. sorry
But if it's "valuable" as in "useful" then the claim was true not only in ancient times but also all down history at least until the advent of digital computing (though less so now than a few decades ago). Or perhaps being used as currency actually made gold more "useful" than salt anyway.
Honestly, the salt part is more interesting to me than weapons talks, I've heard enough about swords. Videos on how to set up a medieval economy are where it's at.
Lindybeige, that either took multiple shoots or you are incredibly talented. (Or finally started scripting) either way great effects, i love your videos and am quite a fan of Skallagrims as well. Don't give up on these "pointless" rants. Simply because something isn't as popular doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
Your evaluation of salt makes the assumption that the World's entire population lives near a body of salt water, or on a trade route used by those who do. Not true. As you pointed out, salt was way more important than just a seasoning; for those living on or near a subsistence level (away from an ocean), salt had real value and gold was just a pretty rock.
+Siesta Time Yes, but to move anything takes transport. It is as expensive to move a ton of salt as a ton of gold. Almost everyone in the ancient and medieval world of Europe and Britain lived within a few days' journey of the sea. Getting hold of the salt in the first place is a LOT easier than the gold, and gold has to be moved too, and most people lived a long way from a good source of gold.
+Siesta Time It's not like everyone in the medieval world was spread out all across the landscape like we are today. Almost everyone in Europe at the time much preferred to live pretty close to the sea, rather than in the middle of nowhere. People really stuck together then. Gold may only have one purpose (to be valuable) but it does it well, it is valuable and used as currency for a reason, if salt were far more valuable then they would use it as currency rather than gold. Salt is as easy to get as taking a bucket of salt water, leaving it in the sun for a few days, then scooping it up. Mining gold in the medieval world was really hard, gold is already really rare but back then it was even more rare and hard to find because their technology wasn't as good, obviously. Also gold is very dense and heavy, so it really took a lot more effort to move than salt. Remember value isn't determined by usefulness, but by how difficult it is to get.
+Lindybeige pound for pound, salt has a much bigger volume then gold. Fragile when crystalline, blows away with wind if powder, and easily dissolved by water and contaminated
Lindybeige I suspect that moving a ton of salt was even more expensive than a ton of gold (volume/mass), but, after moving that ton of gold, what you had was a pretty rock that you could use to buy necessities, like, say, salt. To those without salt and gold, the salt had more worth. Gold's worth is as a medium of exchange - you need to be able to "accumulate wealth" to require an exchange medium. If you kept your exchange in something with an intrinsic worth, say rice, you would lose about 10% per annum to rats and rot; gold is much more storable. Gold was important only to to those who we now call "the 1%" - those who can afford to accumulate wealth; to the 90%+ living pretty much hand to mouth, the caloric value of gold is nil, but we all need salt.
+Erduk You don't like anthropologists? Because Anthropology is where the notion that Gender Is A Social Construct originated. You don't like psychologists? Medical doctors? People who dedicate their life to academic studies? Or maybe you just are afraid of anything you weren't taught in third grade.
+illyounotme I do love skalls videos and knowledge, however people can't have opinions on everythign, sometimes facts and data can only be argued by equally as good facts and data, gender is determined by either the X or Y chromosome found in human at birth, sex is what you identify as. Arguement over. Those are the definitions. However I do agree with you, every one can have opinions and just becuse a person disagress with me doesn't mean I dislike or disrespect him. I just think that for some people opinions overtake facts.
Tyler , did you NOT watch the whole video? 7:40-7:50. I am aware mint is a weedy plant, but that does not stop farmers from growing 100s of acres of it.
@Tyler V I had the same thought - mint is one of the hardiest and more invasive plants, how could it be rare enough to have that much value? For what it's worth, I did a search and couldn't find any mention of him paying for the Invasion of India with mint leaves. This sounds even less believable than the salt factoid.
not in florida... diesel costs 2.5 x water per gallon, and the water is supplied with a container. "loose" filtered water from a machine is about 1/10 the price of diesel (bring your own jug). in "bottled water", you pay mostly for that convenient packaging, not the commodity itself. compare that same water to liter jugs of "synthetic blend" motor oil... bargain goes to water, lol. compare it to 3 oz cans of lighter fuel, only skews it more towards water as "regalo". 2.50 gallon for diesel, roughly a buck for generic water by the gallon, in either gallon jugs or half liter flats of 24 bottles (which go for about 3 bucks for no name). motor oil is, cheapest variety, roughly 3 bucks a liter (2.50 if you buy 5 liter jugs). take out the taxes, the diesel costs about the same as "decent" water in jugs ("offroad diesel" is about 1.50 a gallon)
I'd much rather hear about salt than "half-arrowing". At least one of them exists. Also, it seems Skal is heavily exaggerating his screen persona- for comic effect?
I suspect I know where this myth came from - a lot of Slavic cultures have fairly old fairy tales about something like this. The general plot synopsis goes something like: a king had three daughters and told them to give him present to find out which one loves him most. Two older give him some bling, the youngest gives him salt, he is of course angry at the salt princess and exiles her. Then by one magic or another (I heard of fairy godmothers, the devil, saint Peter, you name it), all the salt in the kingdom turns to gold. Shenanigans ensue as king tries to bypass the curse, but all ultimately fail (imported salt turning to gold at the borders, etc). A king is ultimately humbled and sees the true value of salt, takes back the youngest princess etc etc. The original point of these fairy tales is, I'd think, that while gold is nice, you can do without it, but you can't do without salt, therefore value the things you can't do without in life more than luxury. And then someone doesn't use that brain thingy and takes it as a historical fact and people quote him, because giggling at how quaint people were back then is so in style this season...
If lindeybeige pommeled Skally that would have been one of the top 10 most amusing things on youtube. :-) I hope it appears in their next disagreement. :-)
+Merliginary TH-camrs promoting eachother, common practice. Betting Mr. Lloyd here will pop up in a Skallagrim video soon as well, if he hasn't already. Did it work here, not so sure.
Just to say, I do like the "medieval life" videos that you make. Other people can cover weapons, not many cover the "more boring" stuff, even though I think it's perfectly fascinating as well.
By the way, in Slovakia we have a fairy tale called: ,,Salt over gold", in which a king asks his daughters how much they love him to determine who will inherit what. One says she loves him more than gold, another that more than silver and the third more than salt. This annoys him, since salt isn't so valuable to him, and that makes sense. But to spite her, he gets rid of all the salt in the kingdom. Then he realises that salt is valuable. Salt may not be more valuable, but it is more useful. Food is similairly not more valuable than diamonds.
Lindybeige drinking game: 1. Drink every time he says 'buy and large' 2. Drink every time he asks a rhetorical question or addresses the audience directly 3. Drink when he puts on his condescending stupid person voice and only stop when he does 4. Drink every time he mentions a place he has been 5. Drink every time he says something quintessentially British Love your videos man :) this one was the best one all month :)
Salt probably had much more practical applications than gold, though. There's not a whole lot you can use gold for outside of merchantry. It's handy for electronics, though that's a bit too far for medieval/renaissance merchants to care about.
Salt was worth 283 times as much as gold in egypt in 200 anno dommini you say? Fascinating. I'll buy my salt in Venice. Probably cheaper. Also, this was very amusing, whos idea was the guest star? : ) Cheers!
Peter K. Not long I guess... Just that for a couple of years would be enough to starve the owners or more likely drive them away. But I wouldn't now how much salt that would take but as BaddeJimme pointed out it was likely just an symbolical display of might and wealth to their enemys.
If those large tracts of land were far from Rome, and the population was too obstinate to submit to empire, the Romans might well have decided on an indirect genocide.
lindy would you ever do a video on historic diets, I heard that peasents could afford whale meat but that's about it for meat, I heard they had to boil meat because it was the only way they could afford and that only the very rich could affor roasted meat because of the fuel costs, but wood wasn't that expensive was it ? I don't know !
Think hard about what you just suggested. If they didn't have fuel to roast with, how did they bring water to a boil? I've never heard this idea before but it sounds silly. The only reason I could see peasants favoring a boil over a roast is food safety. If the peasants are getting older meat a boil would sterilize it a bit better than a roast (just a bit). But even that seems unlikely because I'd wager peasants were the ones producing an awful lot of the meat in the first place.
Could it have really been that more fuel-efficient to boil something than to roast it? Whether you're boiling or roasting you're going to need fuel (it actually seems to me you'd use more fuel to boil a pot of water to cook food rather than just spit-roast it). If peasantry did boil food rather than roast it, I would think there'd be some other reason than fuel.
Roasting probably wastes more heat because it just flows around and into the chimney more than a pot of water which tends to soak up most of the heat hitting it? Another factor though is somebody has to sit there and turn the stupid roast spit constantly. Which is probably more relevant. People got things to do, yo. You can't be spinning yarn or cleaning or caring for animals while turning a spit forever. You can while water boils in the other room. This is all assuming the roast meat was inf act more expensive which I'm just taking on faith. But it does seem plausible.
A Volney Crab and lobster used to be (No accurate timeframe) viewed only as insects, so they were really cheap, and they are really plentiful actually. But at some point, people discovered how tasty they were and began fishing them to immense amounts and now you have to go through damn near literal hell to catch them
I seen a programme where they were saying that the myth of Eldorado came from a tribe in central South America who had a salt mine and sold it for gold and amassed a large amount of gold.
I'm sure that somewhere, somewhen, somebody if given the choice between a cup full of gold and a cup full of salt would have picked the salt because at that moment the salt was worth more TO THEM. But whether a general exchange rate ever made salt more valuable by weight to a significant population for more than a day I agree probably not. The thing people keep forgetting is that all worth is relative. Most of the time a chocolate bar with salt in it is worth nothing to me, I don't like them. But when my wife is on her period or pregnant and really wants one they suddenly become worth a lot more to me. The price on a shelf at a store is what the store thinks enough people think that item is worth to keep selling it. Stores can be wrong about that price. If it's too low they sell out quickly and they have missed money they could have made, the store underestimated its value to their customers. If it's too high then it just sits there and the money they are paying to keep it there (electricity, employee wages, security, etc.) is also lost, the store overestimated its value. Just sitting there is far worse for perishable goods because if it sits there long enough the store has to throw it away, it's no longer sellable. If anything stores undervalue quickly perishable goods like milk because they would rather sell for cheap and make some money back then throw it all away and get nothing. TL:DR If you don't like the price at a store, don't pay it. The store thinks it's worth more to someone else. If you pay it anyway then you should actually be upset at yourself for wanting it that bad.
you can use salt for a lot of things, which you mentioned in the video, so it can be argued that salt is more valuable in terms of usage than gold because what purpose does gold alone do?
+A Volney Gold actually has a lot of utility value that we don't usually make use of due to it's rarity. Sure, we'd die without ANY salt because it's a biological necessity, but gold is far from useless (in fact, whatever you used to post that comment probably contains a small amount of gold in it's internal circutry).
Ummm...do you mean a specific type of mint? It grows like a weed in my backyard. I guess it just hadn't spread back then, so they had to get it from far away. Or is this a joke?
***** I love his historical videos, he is my second favorite person teaching me history :3 (First was my actual history teacher. Shorts, sandles, and t-shirts, with long blonde hair and a scruffy beard... And yet not the kind of person you're thinking of :3)
"those of us who complain about his non-weapon vids" There are people like that? The majority of lindy's content, and most of his best content, has notthing to do with any specific weapon.
and in 200 years people will say:
"did you know that in the olden days Printer ink used to be more valuable than gold?"
But that would actually be true.
Republiken well there is a difference between more valuable than gold and more expensive than gold
Some historians claim that the fall of the Ipadian Civilisation came because the elite grew distance from the poor. But no matter how much wealth they had they couldn't eat printer ink and thus where easy pickings for the revolutionaries to siege them out from their villas.
Republiken the revolutionaries poured printer ink over the elite thus branding them for live because that stuff takes ages to wash off
The era was known as the Printer Terror.
That Skall collab ... didn't think you knew each other
I was shocked. I saw him walk on and had to take a step back.
+illyounotme yeh anyone subbed to one is probs subbed to the other, i know i am
Same here.
+Sherruk I found both of them in the same day while going through video suggestions.
+Iron Dawn Yeah the ancient history/hema youtube channels all seem to know each other.
The fact that you'd talk about salt in the ancient world, in great detail, is precisely why I like this channel. :D
Forests, torches, cloaks, more torches, yeah!
Preach
Exactly why I like this channel more as well.
Sure something on weapons and armor is nice once in a while. But there is more to the ancient world than armies rampaging through the land...
That low fps on skallagrim
Eso es lo que le da el puntito
Lloyd: PC
Skallagrim: console
It was the audio too lol
s k y p e c:
Never forget LindyBeige keeps a ray gun for people who interrupt him.
Never forgetti, rest in spaghetti.
Next time someone says to me "You know, in the ancient world, salt was more valuable than gold?" I'll say "Yeah, that's why ancient coins were made of salt."
I believe the fact that the coins would have dissolved in rain or the generally damp climate in Europe makes a valid counterargument
soat7ch If you can afford salt coins, you can afford a waterproof salt coin purse.
So today, paper is the most valuable thing there is.
There's a difference between fiat money (which represents value held elsewhere, commonly gold) and hard money (made from actual value, commonly gold or silver).
There were ancient coins made out of salt. There just aren't any left.
An Englishman argues with a Swede who lives in Canada without ever meeting him in person.
What a time to be alive.
I thought skall was German
I thought Skallagrim was a German who went to Norway and then to Canada.
*****
Well, now I'm just confused.
Isn't Skall from Norway?
Isn't he Dutch?
Skallagrim, wow that was unexpected lol
The Loveless Bayonetta Lover "No one escapes the Spanish Inquisition"
The Loveless Bayonetta Lover The pommel inquisition, heretic!
Prepare to be ended rightly.
my mind just blow up becourse i saw Skall and than again bec. somebodey used a monty python joke , i am in the right place here :D
PS sry for the english i´m sill learning it ^^
The Loveless Bayonetta Lover no why ? :D
The Loveless Bayonetta Lover it's my second language . I'm from Germany :)
that was fucking great, nice cameo, but the vids are good no matter what they are about
Yeah. I don't care about half the things he talks about beforehand but I come back because he's both entertaining and educational.
Lloyd and Skall in the same video? My wet dreams have come true.
So have my hard ones...
I am astounded at how they produced this video. they appear to be at different frame rates and in different lighting environments. earned my thumbs up as soon as they exchanged the arrow
They were in different environments with different lighting!
Your Salty Dreams ?
I assumed the pale skin was due to Skall's vegetarian diet, but yes they were in different locations when filmed.
Well, now we need an in depth ray gun overview.
A 50's ray gun no less.
Whoa .....That's deep!
Best anime fights
"Salt is more valuable than gold because the Mali Empire traded gold for salt"
Because gold was *money.* That's like saying Walmart discount DVDs are more valuable then the US Dollar because you pay for them with cash
Aren't those dvds more expendive than a dollar?
but where all the gold mines were people couldn't really get salt so it was probably more valuable to them
The Mali empire had both salt and gold mines so no. Gold was still more Valuable. And it was currency.
@@Otto_Von_Beansmarck the mali empire had access to the coast.
@@davidkazira6060 I finally got an explanation for how that worked. The gold mines were in a tropical climate, they were basically impossible to operate without a lot of salt because salt helped the miners retain more water in the heat. Still probably wasn't healthy, but if you're sweating buckets, you need both lots of water and lots of salt. The salt was mostly on the north, the gold was mostly in the south, so the trade developed along those lines and just kept extending.
Anything can become more valuable than gold if you don't have it and need it.
Underrated comment
Funny that people said gold is valuable yet they still value gold based on paper money...which is nothing more than paper...which an accepted worth solely by general consensus.
Used to be paper money was valued in gold actually; but I think they changed it because of the infrastructure you'd need to hold all the gold you need to in order to keep your money valuable; what with credit and banks being dicks and whatnot
pered5 Yes and similar like all paper money in history, it's all heading towards an inevitable crash---but that we could discuss on other youtube video that explain the issue. You might like to read about ancient china, japan, egypt and sumeria where they use grain as medium of payment. Maybe it's not true cash but the government during that era use a concept of yearly stipend where they pay an amount of grain (wheat, barley, rice) to government officials.
Simpler times than our present monetary system that we are plagued with now.
Actually, it's da joos hoo dunnit.
I laughed a bit to hard when skalgrim showed up
+TheScottishPyro Now I need to clean my monitor from all the saliva I spat out. Thanks, Lindybeige.
I couldn't tell if they were actually in the sape room, skallagrim looked slightly jankier and they never touched the same objects, if you pay attention to the arrows they always 'hand them over' out of shot
+alfred mason-fayle cleary skallagrim on a green screen. notice their lighting areqite different? especially appereant when they are waving swords, it reflect at different angle/spot + brigtness is also different
+alfred mason-fayle and the audio
yer there not in the same room.
+Neko Nomi well yes, obviously he was on a green screen. It actually makes it more impressive in my opinion, think of the timing and the scripting! Really well done.
In the 16th or 17th century there was a Hungarian nobleman - the exact time and the guy's name escapes me right now - who was told that he can marry a particular lady if he will take her home on a horse-drawn sledge - in summer. He responded with purchasing the entire stock of the salt mines of Máramaros, Transylvania and covered the road with it between the two places. Then he actually took her on a sledge ride. Let's hope she was worth it...
wasn't about marriage...was about empress Maria-Theresia coming to visit the duke of esterhazy at his palace in hungary and he wished to entertain her with a sledge ride in summer
@@humbie1000 Thanks. Details are still hazy. It took the entire annual production of the mines of Máramaros, I remember that.
Then he actually... What? What happened?
Ok he edited it, thanks
Pussy allways been expensive
The video was very interesting lindy! Do not listen to skalagrim.
Well he's dead now. Good old handy ray-gun.
What IS more valuable than gold is printer ink.
There are heaps of things more valuable than gold.
+jimpozcaner not by economic standards.
and crack cocaine..
Useful vs valuable
Only in mass, not in volume, and only because gold weighs a shitton and printer ink does not.
I was waiting for Matt to walk in at the very end
Matt who?
The maker of the TH-cam-site "scholagladiatoria", very similar to Lindybeige and Skallagrim
Okay, thanks. I've actually seen one or two of his videos.
He wasn't really there. That was special effects.
wow, you ser do have a very keen eye. I went back and watched again and only then did i notice the signs of a greenscreen! well done.
You know in the olden days, timber was more valuable than diamond.
+g00dn4m3 You know in the olden days, rocks were more valuable than microprocessors.
+Joseph Bissett Really ?
+g00dn4m3 I suspect you could be right in a sense. If you imagine all the diamond trading in the world, and all the lumber trading, which one would be sold more? The wood, because it was used for so much, where as diamonds are pretty rocks...they...um...look nice? The fact is wood was more usefull, there was a larger market for it and therefore the total profit would probably of been higher.
On another note, I think the current price of diamond is only so high because of a monopoly on their mining and refining. Not exactly sure of this, but it would seem a tad odd that a formation of one of the most common elements on the planet is so rare.
In conclusion, usefullness > pretty rock.
+g00dn4m3 but nothen vill evar b as vauble as stuffing teh french
The diamond sector is locked in a controlled demand. In reality they're not as valuable and rare as they're made out to be.
You cant make a pommel out of salt. so yeah gold is better.
Actually if you melt salt it becomes little bit like glass. So you could do it.
Heretic But throwing it would cause it's destruction, therefore you could not recollect the pommel for rescrewing, and further throwing.
Scrolled down the second I saw him to look for comments like this
Altan Şirin gold is as malleable as play dough.
@@poiuytrewq11422 Clearly you've never seen a prince rupert's pommel
I REFUSE TO BELIEVE SKALLAGRIM IS THIS SHORT...
...or that he's got this low framerate irl.
I think Lindybeige is actually like 6'4'' or something
Met him a couple of weeks ago, he's much taller than you'd expect.
i think there was a discussion on scholagladiatoria quite a while back just about that.
thing is: both lloyd and matt are over six foot and skall is not; unlike in the drawing the discussion was about.
he's not small, but he is compared to lloyd.
sorry
I was talking about Lloyd, he's a giant of a man. Met him in Newcastle.
Skallagrim is not short, Lindybeige is a giant
More useful then gold. Can live without gold. Can't live without salt.
Yeah, I guess it's the difference between "valuable" as in useful and "valuable" as in expensive.
But if it's "valuable" as in "useful" then the claim was true not only in ancient times but also all down history at least until the advent of digital computing (though less so now than a few decades ago).
Or perhaps being used as currency actually made gold more "useful" than salt anyway.
Your computer uses gold in the contacts, think about what you are saying. You can live with out your computer?
I grew up in the 50s and 60s without one, I could do without. I like reading books.
Gold isn't necessary for electrical contacts, it's just much better than many other alternatives.
take the head off the arrow and throw it at him to end him rightly
Would that not be the nock of the arrow you are supposed to twist off, throw and end him rightly with?
anything that you can use to end him rightly
Honestly, the salt part is more interesting to me than weapons talks, I've heard enough about swords. Videos on how to set up a medieval economy are where it's at.
Lindybeige, that either took multiple shoots or you are incredibly talented. (Or finally started scripting) either way great effects, i love your videos and am quite a fan of Skallagrims as well. Don't give up on these "pointless" rants. Simply because something isn't as popular doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
Your evaluation of salt makes the assumption that the World's entire population lives near a body of salt water, or on a trade route used by those who do. Not true. As you pointed out, salt was way more important than just a seasoning; for those living on or near a subsistence level (away from an ocean), salt had real value and gold was just a pretty rock.
+Siesta Time Yes, but to move anything takes transport. It is as expensive to move a ton of salt as a ton of gold. Almost everyone in the ancient and medieval world of Europe and Britain lived within a few days' journey of the sea. Getting hold of the salt in the first place is a LOT easier than the gold, and gold has to be moved too, and most people lived a long way from a good source of gold.
+Siesta Time It's not like everyone in the medieval world was spread out all across the landscape like we are today. Almost everyone in Europe at the time much preferred to live pretty close to the sea, rather than in the middle of nowhere. People really stuck together then. Gold may only have one purpose (to be valuable) but it does it well, it is valuable and used as currency for a reason, if salt were far more valuable then they would use it as currency rather than gold. Salt is as easy to get as taking a bucket of salt water, leaving it in the sun for a few days, then scooping it up. Mining gold in the medieval world was really hard, gold is already really rare but back then it was even more rare and hard to find because their technology wasn't as good, obviously. Also gold is very dense and heavy, so it really took a lot more effort to move than salt. Remember value isn't determined by usefulness, but by how difficult it is to get.
+Lindybeige only if people would think about it for a moment. How wonderful the world would have been.
+Lindybeige pound for pound, salt has a much bigger volume then gold. Fragile when crystalline, blows away with wind if powder, and easily dissolved by water and contaminated
Lindybeige
I suspect that moving a ton of salt was even more expensive than a ton of gold (volume/mass), but, after moving that ton of gold, what you had was a pretty rock that you could use to buy necessities, like, say, salt. To those without salt and gold, the salt had more worth. Gold's worth is as a medium of exchange - you need to be able to "accumulate wealth" to require an exchange medium. If you kept your exchange in something with an intrinsic worth, say rice, you would lose about 10% per annum to rats and rot; gold is much more storable. Gold was important only to to those who we now call "the 1%" - those who can afford to accumulate wealth; to the 90%+ living pretty much hand to mouth, the caloric value of gold is nil, but we all need salt.
Lindybeige is way more interesting to watch than Skallagrim. Talk about salt all you want.
+Erduk I hope no one gets salty
+Erduk Much less stupid over-groomed facial topiary, too.
illyounotme
Honestly, I just don't like Skallagrim. He's one of those "gender is a social construct" people.
+Erduk You don't like anthropologists? Because Anthropology is where the notion that Gender Is A Social Construct originated. You don't like psychologists? Medical doctors? People who dedicate their life to academic studies? Or maybe you just are afraid of anything you weren't taught in third grade.
+illyounotme I do love skalls videos and knowledge, however people can't have opinions on everythign, sometimes facts and data can only be argued by equally as good facts and data, gender is determined by either the X or Y chromosome found in human at birth, sex is what you identify as. Arguement over. Those are the definitions. However I do agree with you, every one can have opinions and just becuse a person disagress with me doesn't mean I dislike or disrespect him. I just think that for some people opinions overtake facts.
Do we get a video on mint now?
I second that thought - I'd love to hear how Alexander the Great paid for his invasion in mint leaves :)
And why it's so valuable.
Tyler , did you NOT watch the whole video? 7:40-7:50. I am aware mint is a weedy plant, but that does not stop farmers from growing 100s of acres of it.
@Tyler V I had the same thought - mint is one of the hardiest and more invasive plants, how could it be rare enough to have that much value?
For what it's worth, I did a search and couldn't find any mention of him paying for the Invasion of India with mint leaves. This sounds even less believable than the salt factoid.
@Thicc Alien I rly suspect it was bait for seeing how many were dumb enought to google it.. as I did :D ahaushduashdu
So salt was perhaps more important, but not more valuable.
Yep, good ol' Water-Diamond Paradox.
I am an olde timey alchemiste. I can produce salt simply by speaking to peasants.
fuck you dude do you think you're funny talking about peasants? eat shit.
Wow, a live demonstration. Neat.
Do you have a philosopher's stone?
The message is, a sci-fi devistation Ray will defeat any medieval sword
Rey*
BenjaminGoose I don’t remember what this comment was about. But I think I’m referring to like a raygun. In which case RAY is the correct spelling.
@@negativejam2188 I think he is referring to a rumor that there was a series of sci-fi movies with a main character named Rey.
paul lyons I don’t get how a reference to Star Wars makes sense here, but cool I suppose
@@paullyons5225 It's only a rumor.
So, you are saying that CS:GO is a goldmine?
Technically a salt mine
Pretty thoughtful comment bro
Y4Y salt mine
No its a salt mineeee
r/wooosh
If salt was more valuable than gold we'd all be harvesting League of Legends players.
memmett9 or TH-cam commenters. The comment section is basically a salt mine.
Bonus points for making Skal shorter than you.
This being said I have no idea how tall he actually is.
Skall is shorter than Lloyd, because Lloyd is seriously tall
I think I remember Lloyd being around 6'3", but Skal appears Scandinavian enough to be something equally monstrous.
but hes a vegetarian so unlikely.
Fair enough.
What has that to do with anything?
Skall is 1.76m and Lloyd is over 1.90m, so he's just taller than most.
It was actually making some sense until about halfway.
Then a wild Skallagrim appeared.
Now I'm salty. :(
I'm so salty
You certainly get around this website, god damn.
How did you even get here ouo
Weenie
how precious
Skall's sword might be a bit shorter, but at least it has more girth!
So salt was valuable in the same sense petroleum is valuable now. It might be the "black gold" but diesel is cheaper than bottled water.
Drink tap water (don't drink diesel).
yeah, but you can't injest water. So the salt analogy clearly doesn't work.
not in florida... diesel costs 2.5 x water per gallon, and the water is supplied with a container. "loose" filtered water from a machine is about 1/10 the price of diesel (bring your own jug). in "bottled water", you pay mostly for that convenient packaging, not the commodity itself. compare that same water to liter jugs of "synthetic blend" motor oil... bargain goes to water, lol. compare it to 3 oz cans of lighter fuel, only skews it more towards water as "regalo". 2.50 gallon for diesel, roughly a buck for generic water by the gallon, in either gallon jugs or half liter flats of 24 bottles (which go for about 3 bucks for no name). motor oil is, cheapest variety, roughly 3 bucks a liter (2.50 if you buy 5 liter jugs). take out the taxes, the diesel costs about the same as "decent" water in jugs ("offroad diesel" is about 1.50 a gallon)
Mmm black gold. I fuken love coke a cola too 😝😂
Practical value is the word you're looking for
I'd much rather hear about salt than "half-arrowing". At least one of them exists.
Also, it seems Skal is heavily exaggerating his screen persona- for comic effect?
He's always been a cringelord. This isn't new.
Perhaps the reason is that this was done for comedic purposes?
+Darius P what! That cant be true! LIES AND PIES!
Konrad Eklund Yeah, I just made it up. It's all probably true, especially the laser part.
RIP Skallagrim
whatever - 2016
Yeah, I read it as Skal parodying a subset of the audience as well.
my therapist : "low fps skall is not real, he can't hurt you"
low fps skall : 02:48
I suspect I know where this myth came from - a lot of Slavic cultures have fairly old fairy tales about something like this. The general plot synopsis goes something like: a king had three daughters and told them to give him present to find out which one loves him most. Two older give him some bling, the youngest gives him salt, he is of course angry at the salt princess and exiles her.
Then by one magic or another (I heard of fairy godmothers, the devil, saint Peter, you name it), all the salt in the kingdom turns to gold. Shenanigans ensue as king tries to bypass the curse, but all ultimately fail (imported salt turning to gold at the borders, etc). A king is ultimately humbled and sees the true value of salt, takes back the youngest princess etc etc.
The original point of these fairy tales is, I'd think, that while gold is nice, you can do without it, but you can't do without salt, therefore value the things you can't do without in life more than luxury.
And then someone doesn't use that brain thingy and takes it as a historical fact and people quote him, because giggling at how quaint people were back then is so in style this season...
Fairytales tend to fall over when you apply logic. *All* the salt turns to gold? Including the salt inside the human body? Tricky...
@@grmmmmhpph Fairy tales aren't about realism but about telling a message.
A ray gun? Should've used a pommel and ended him wrongly...
That's going to be Skall's counter. A pommel from the grave will still end your opponent rightly.
It's what happened next, Skall waited in his death til Lindy had uploaded the video until he unscrewed his pommel and ended Lindy rightly.
If lindeybeige pommeled Skally that would have been one of the top 10 most amusing things on youtube. :-) I hope it appears in their next disagreement. :-)
What was their first disagreement?
The pommel would had been overkill.
Salt vs Spandau?
This guy has the dopest sweaters.
Also, Skallagrim should do more ASMR...
Is Lindy an English a giant, or Skul a dwarf?
lol lindy is better at editing
+GameSquid And he's actually darn tall, too. I remember him saying something about that in one of his other videos.
Yes
+wesleyfilms Lindy is about 6 foot 3, so I would say the heights are spot on
I believe Lloyd is about 6feet tall (2 meters for the rest of the planet) and Skall is probably 6 to 8 inches shorter than that.
Is skall dead?
+Gatis Gavars I think so. I was very thorough.
+Lindybeige You didn't throw a pommel at him, end him rightly. How savage you are.
+Lindybeige xD
+Lindybeige i actually lold
+Lindybeige what brand is that, every time i try to disintegrate someone i end up with dust all over the place.
Hey I give a crap about salt.
And farmers give a crap about crap as well.
RIP Skallagrim. Damn, I was just getting into that channel.
what.... the hell is skall doing in this video?
The golden trio. Lindybiege, Skallagrim and... scholar gladiatora. I'm fudging the spelling and the names, but you know
+Merliginary Being disintegrated, it would seem.
well, that is what you get when your greatsword doesnt have an unscrewable pommel
+Merliginary TH-camrs promoting eachother, common practice. Betting Mr. Lloyd here will pop up in a Skallagrim video soon as well, if he hasn't already. Did it work here, not so sure.
+Merliginary yep. should have ended him rightly.
Just to say, I do like the "medieval life" videos that you make. Other people can cover weapons, not many cover the "more boring" stuff, even though I think it's perfectly fascinating as well.
I was quite enjoying Lloyd talking about salt actually 😂
I got mesmerized by his ray gun. It seems to have secondary properties! 😅
By the way, in Slovakia we have a fairy tale called: ,,Salt over gold", in which a king asks his daughters how much they love him to determine who will inherit what. One says she loves him more than gold, another that more than silver and the third more than salt. This annoys him, since salt isn't so valuable to him, and that makes sense. But to spite her, he gets rid of all the salt in the kingdom. Then he realises that salt is valuable.
Salt may not be more valuable, but it is more useful.
Food is similairly not more valuable than diamonds.
you should have pulled out a KATANA !! they can cut through the sun,you know
And, according to Homestuck, through a meteor.
+derfloh93 lol
How would he be able to end him rightly? Didn't think of that did you?
Or a Buster Sword to reduce his "bigger is better" argument to absurdity.
The sun? More like through a neutron star amirite?
A wild Skalagrim appeared.
the video was actually really interesting up to the point were the other dude showed up.. -.-
"The other dude" is Skallagrim, another great historical weapons and martial arts TH-camr.
Check him out, his vids are interesting and funny at times.
Yeah, i know, so? ;)
I don't care who he was, he made the middle third of the video boring and stupid.
Damn skallagrim to hell i hope the divines deal him Swift justice!
Makes sense that mint was so expensive. I think farming is a fairly recent invention.
Also, American here where energy weapons are legally considered power tools, do you need an FAC for a ray gun, or is it like a TV permit?
it looks like whats his name is at a lower framerate then lloyd
But a better resolution
+Elena PINEDA Do you suppose there is such a thing as "low resolution inferiority complex"? :D
+Headrock Oooooooooooooooh! Burn!
Host privilege lol.
Skallagrim
Noooo, Skallagrim! I want to hear more about salt! Salt is really cool! I love learning the historic context of this wonderful mineral!
I like how lindy was looking down and skal up.
Lindybeige drinking game:
1. Drink every time he says 'buy and large'
2. Drink every time he asks a rhetorical question or addresses the audience directly
3. Drink when he puts on his condescending stupid person voice and only stop when he does
4. Drink every time he mentions a place he has been
5. Drink every time he says something quintessentially British
Love your videos man :) this one was the best one all month :)
+Harry Upton I got alcohol poisioning
Almost 8 minutes of nonstop drinking. No time to breathe.
+Harry Upton I would but alcohol costs more than platinum.
This game sounds incredibly deadly.
are you trying to kill people?
I'm expecting a video on Skallagrim's Channel with Lindybeige now.
the korean word for salt 소금 so-geum literally means "small gold" ^_^
+squigoo Nice nugget if information!
+squigoo Funny how it kind of sounds like "sodium" too
+squigoo Sounds a lot like sodium... As in sodium chloride o_O
+Lindybeige That darn auto-correct, eh?
+Greyghostvol1 I doubt he even has a smartphone, i is next to o.
Salt probably had much more practical applications than gold, though. There's not a whole lot you can use gold for outside of merchantry. It's handy for electronics, though that's a bit too far for medieval/renaissance merchants to care about.
No need to use a ray gun, you could have simply thrown your pommel at him.
I actually like the non weapon videos. I find them more interesting. I don´t hate the weapon videos though.
R.I.P. Skall.
He was a big guy.
+George Wittelsbach-Lorraine-Mclarion-Hoopy For you!
I like to think that lioyd had to go to the store and ask for a toy gun that makes these specific noises
Salt was worth 283 times as much as gold in egypt in 200 anno dommini you say? Fascinating. I'll buy my salt in Venice. Probably cheaper.
Also, this was very amusing, whos idea was the guest star? : )
Cheers!
Skallagrim ( th-cam.com/users/Skallagrim )
i really like this detailed medieval life stuff.
Didn't the Romans salt on fields to make them infertile? Wouldn't do that with gold would you?
I found this inSALTing.
They only did that symbolically though. Salt was still far too expensive to render large tracts of land unfarmable.
+BaddeJimme How much salt would actually be required per hectare? And for how many decades or centuries would the effect last?
Peter K.
Not long I guess... Just that for a couple of years would be enough to starve the owners or more likely drive them away. But I wouldn't now how much salt that would take but as BaddeJimme pointed out it was likely just an symbolical display of might and wealth to their enemys.
Also, large tracts of land were expensive commodity, too. It made little sense to destroy both.
If those large tracts of land were far from Rome, and the population was too obstinate to submit to empire, the Romans might well have decided on an indirect genocide.
I thought it was a misinterpretation of the salt trade being worth more (or more lucrative) than gold mining
lindy would you ever do a video on historic diets, I heard that peasents could afford whale meat but that's about it for meat, I heard they had to boil meat because it was the only way they could afford and that only the very rich could affor roasted meat because of the fuel costs, but wood wasn't that expensive was it ? I don't know !
Think hard about what you just suggested. If they didn't have fuel to roast with, how did they bring water to a boil?
I've never heard this idea before but it sounds silly. The only reason I could see peasants favoring a boil over a roast is food safety. If the peasants are getting older meat a boil would sterilize it a bit better than a roast (just a bit). But even that seems unlikely because I'd wager peasants were the ones producing an awful lot of the meat in the first place.
Could it have really been that more fuel-efficient to boil something than to roast it? Whether you're boiling or roasting you're going to need fuel (it actually seems to me you'd use more fuel to boil a pot of water to cook food rather than just spit-roast it). If peasantry did boil food rather than roast it, I would think there'd be some other reason than fuel.
no, boiling water takes a huge amount of energy, it would make far more sense to cook the meat directly
It depends on the timeperiod. In early medieval europe meat was very common (10th century)
Roasting probably wastes more heat because it just flows around and into the chimney more than a pot of water which tends to soak up most of the heat hitting it? Another factor though is somebody has to sit there and turn the stupid roast spit constantly. Which is probably more relevant. People got things to do, yo. You can't be spinning yarn or cleaning or caring for animals while turning a spit forever. You can while water boils in the other room.
This is all assuming the roast meat was inf act more expensive which I'm just taking on faith. But it does seem plausible.
hahah skallagrim invaded the video
that was awesome.
Very well made video! :D Cheers to Skallagrim!
"Who would watch a video about salt? No one is interested in salt."
542 477 views as of 28.8.2021.
Wait, does this mean there was actual scripting involved in a Lindybeige video‽ Preposterous!
Not at my end.
+Lindybeige I wanted to hear about salt some more.
+Anthony Craig are you salty now?
Did you feel assalted?
***** Quiete.
Here I was thinking Lindy was short
Lindy is tall man. Have you seen him in his vids where he is next to other people?
Or maybe he's like Tom Cruise and only allows himself to be filmed next to people who are shorter than him...
:P
Yah, on camera he looks kinda short somehow, so it's easy to forget that he's pretty darn tall.
Is skallagrim really that short?
Lindy is roughly nine feet tall.
+TheKyleMark makes sense.
thats what i was wondering.
+adam kimmⓋ No, Lloyd is obscenely tall. I'm not kidding.
lundy is very very tall
That was the best and most hilarious TH-cam cameo I've seen in a while.
Can we go back to the old times when peasants ate lobster and crab because it was like the cheapest meat out there?
When was this?
+A Volney definitely not if you lived in the desert!
AzurasCry If you lived in a dessert you would be eating a lot of cakes...
A Volney Crab and lobster used to be (No accurate timeframe) viewed only as insects, so they were really cheap, and they are really plentiful actually.
But at some point, people discovered how tasty they were and began fishing them to immense amounts and now you have to go through damn near literal hell to catch them
***** This sounds really false. Where and when man?
I still can't believe Skallagrim is dead
An arrow is not a weapon. It lacks the pommel.
I seen a programme where they were saying that the myth of Eldorado came from a tribe in central South America who had a salt mine and sold it for gold and amassed a large amount of gold.
all coastlines are very long, lindybeige. almost infinitely long
am I the only one curious of what Lloyd does for a living?
Believe it or not, dance teacher.
I'm waiting for Lindybeige / Tex Murphy crossover
I believe Mr. Lloyd is a very respected accountant.
So basically we have no idea what he does then...
Uh... gentleman?
Great video, I loved the interchange with Skallgrim!
I'm sure that somewhere, somewhen, somebody if given the choice between a cup full of gold and a cup full of salt would have picked the salt because at that moment the salt was worth more TO THEM. But whether a general exchange rate ever made salt more valuable by weight to a significant population for more than a day I agree probably not.
The thing people keep forgetting is that all worth is relative. Most of the time a chocolate bar with salt in it is worth nothing to me, I don't like them. But when my wife is on her period or pregnant and really wants one they suddenly become worth a lot more to me.
The price on a shelf at a store is what the store thinks enough people think that item is worth to keep selling it. Stores can be wrong about that price. If it's too low they sell out quickly and they have missed money they could have made, the store underestimated its value to their customers. If it's too high then it just sits there and the money they are paying to keep it there (electricity, employee wages, security, etc.) is also lost, the store overestimated its value. Just sitting there is far worse for perishable goods because if it sits there long enough the store has to throw it away, it's no longer sellable. If anything stores undervalue quickly perishable goods like milk because they would rather sell for cheap and make some money back then throw it all away and get nothing.
TL:DR
If you don't like the price at a store, don't pay it. The store thinks it's worth more to someone else. If you pay it anyway then you should actually be upset at yourself for wanting it that bad.
Your next video could be on bringing a sword to a gunfight
you can use salt for a lot of things, which you mentioned in the video, so it can be argued that salt is more valuable in terms of usage than gold because what purpose does gold alone do?
It buys salt and all the things your preserve or use that salt on.
Buying salt of course!!!
In terms of monetary value gold is worth more. Monetary value however depends on having society. Salt is definitely more useful.
+A Volney Gold actually has a lot of utility value that we don't usually make use of due to it's rarity.
Sure, we'd die without ANY salt because it's a biological necessity, but gold is far from useless (in fact, whatever you used to post that comment probably contains a small amount of gold in it's internal circutry).
DynamicWorlds Good point, I'm always surprised at the weird places gold can be found.
Ummm...do you mean a specific type of mint? It grows like a weed in my backyard. I guess it just hadn't spread back then, so they had to get it from far away. Or is this a joke?
I'm gonna be honest. I googled mint just to be sure it was a joke.
LOL!
+Lindybeige I love you.
I still dont get it.
+Christopher Urbalejo what other kinds of "mints" are there?
If ever I find myself trapped in the past I'm becoming a salt merchant.
Lindy...do...did you just straight up murder Skallagrim?
+The Learned Soldier I hope so, he was just a pain in the butt.
+The Learned Soldier I'm fairly sure he didn't _murder_ him - he _cooked_ him.
+Headrock Needs more salt
+Headrock Looked more like roasted, cooking meat only takes 3 seconds with the cooky-wave-o-matic.
It was just a dark spirit. Lindy banished him from his world using a steam-powered atomic ray.
Talk about whatever you want Lindy, screw that guy.
Hey! Skal is awesome just like him :3 It's clear they were joking
Yeah it was a jab at those of us who complain about his non-weapon vids. lol
***** I love his historical videos, he is my second favorite person teaching me history :3 (First was my actual history teacher. Shorts, sandles, and t-shirts, with long blonde hair and a scruffy beard... And yet not the kind of person you're thinking of :3)
"those of us who complain about his non-weapon vids"
There are people like that? The majority of lindy's content, and most of his best content, has notthing to do with any specific weapon.
Apache The way I found him was through a non-weapon vid
5:07 while Lloyd says bigger doesn't mean better I think small was about to make a thingy joke.
CURVED. SWORDS.
"Oh, I missed a bit." This channel is The History Channel meets Monty Python. Fantastic.
*A WILD SKALL HAS APPEARED*
Lindy should have pulled out a katana.
Heh they both would just look at it and throw it away then continue to argument.
Oh man I'd have paid to see that...
RACIST!
He's not a weeb
Thats just unfair. An overkill.
obviously green-screened Skall is obviously green-screened
Still awesome cameo
+Ari Schwartz No shit, Sherlock.
I love that +whybother and +Krascara didn't read my reply to my own comment.
Wow, the Israelites must have been rich, living next to the Dead Sea.