Being critical in the development of the human civilization, the ancient salt-making has been an important research issue for both historians and archaeologists. Since salt dissolves in water, it is difficult to tell whether the salt in archaeological samples was caused by human production of salt or underground water. So how to judge the existence of salt production has been a world-wide problem in archaeology and archaeometry. Most people think that China's salt production started in Sichuan, but scientific evidence to support this conclusion has not been got yet. Recently, Prof. WANG Changsui from the Graduate University of CAS and his former doctoral student ZHU Jiping at the University of Science and Technology of China, in cooperation with archaeologists from Harvard University, California University at Los Angeles and several Chinese institutions, provided strong scientific evidence that shows the earliest salt production activities in Zhongba in southwest China's Sichuan Province emerged at least 3,000 years ago. Their work was reported in the August 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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