6,000-year-old salt hub discovered in UK

Salt was manufactured by neolithic people about 6,000 years ago, before the building of Stonehenge and over two millennia earlier than was first considered, a new discovery has found. 

Excavations at a region at Street House farm in North Yorkshire have brought out evidence of the earliest salt production site ever discovered in Britain, which existed at about 3,800 BC. 

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The findings include a trench containing three hearths, broken shards of neolithic pottery, some still filled with salt deposits, and a storage pit, all significant evidence of salt processing, reports The Guardian. 

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The discovery is "spectacular and of national significance," says Steve Sherlock, the archaeologist who led the excavations. 

Many bronze salt-working sites are known in the UK, the earliest amongst which dates to around 1,400 BC. 

Though neolithic salterns have been found in Europe, particularly in Poland and the Balkans, no such sites were found in Britain. 

The research is published in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity in June. 

Sherlock called the people who were processing salt here "pioneers" and said they had cleared oak and elm forests to form their settlements. 

He added that the pottery found was brought by people who arrived from northern France about 4,000 BC, and "the salt-working technology probably arrived with these migrating people".