Who Put the Salt in Basalt?
We know the rock called basalt—the black, hard stuff made by volcanoes and the most widespread rock on Earth. But what does the name mean? What's the "salt" about? Is it the etymological vestige of some antique theory?
The word "basalt" has ancient roots. Before basalt became an English word it was the Latin adjective basaltes. That was a term used by Agricola (the Latinized name of Georg Bauer) in the 1500s, and it has also been found in some of the existing copies of manuscripts of Pliny the Elder, of ancient Rome.
However, in his original manuscripts, the evidence shows that Pliny actually used the word basanites. Therefore the "salt" part appears to have arisen from a copyist's error sometime between Roman and Medieval times. And even then, the word meant something different from what we say today. In the 1500s, Agricola was using the word to refer not to basalt as we know it, but to black marble!
We seem to have gotten the modern word and its current sense, if not the exact meaning, from one of Agricola's contemporaries, the scholar Conrad Gesner. In his writings, Gesner used the word basaltes to refer to all kinds of dark, crystalline rocks in general. This word came in handy once the realy Earth scientists had paid closer attention and sorted out the rocks more carefully. At that point we needed a name for the hard black rocks that were obviously not marble but something else, and "basalt" finally had something close to its modern meaning. Today the name "basalt" is quite closely constrained to a fine-grained igneous rock of a narrow range of composition.
(The term "granite" has gone through a similar evolution and is now used quite narrowly by geologists.)
OK, so going back in time from Agricola's day toward the original source of the word, what did the Romans call basanites? They appear to have used it for any dark stone that was used in buildings or monuments. The word was borrowed from the Greek language, where basanites was used to refer to touchstone. Touchstone is a term for a piece of hard rock used to test precious metals by their streak. Today we use ceramic streak plates for the purpose of testing various minerals and no longer use touchstones to test precious metals, but in old times flint or emery or even basalt were used as touchstones.
It seems that in borrowing basanites from the Greek, the Romans were using it in a sense close to the even older Egyptian word bakhan, which referred to a particular rock type used for monuments. The original bakhan-stone appears to have been, in fact, a dark graywacke—a dirty sandstone. There is no salt in basalt, and there never has been.
The rock itself that we call basalt today has had different meanings, too. Until around 1800, European geologists didn't agree that basalt was even igneous. Sure, some of it came from volcanoes but, it was argued, the thick buried beds of the stuff must have been laid down in the same universal seas that created the rest of the rocks. It could have been some sort of salt, akin to rock salt. This was the best thinking of smart people who had barely invented the rudiments of chemistry and had no tools more powerful than hand lenses and rhetoric. But the "salt" part is pure coincidence, and a reminder that not everything in the language needs to make sense.
The word "basalt" has ancient roots. Before basalt became an English word it was the Latin adjective basaltes. That was a term used by Agricola (the Latinized name of Georg Bauer) in the 1500s, and it has also been found in some of the existing copies of manuscripts of Pliny the Elder, of ancient Rome.
However, in his original manuscripts, the evidence shows that Pliny actually used the word basanites. Therefore the "salt" part appears to have arisen from a copyist's error sometime between Roman and Medieval times. And even then, the word meant something different from what we say today. In the 1500s, Agricola was using the word to refer not to basalt as we know it, but to black marble!
We seem to have gotten the modern word and its current sense, if not the exact meaning, from one of Agricola's contemporaries, the scholar Conrad Gesner. In his writings, Gesner used the word basaltes to refer to all kinds of dark, crystalline rocks in general. This word came in handy once the realy Earth scientists had paid closer attention and sorted out the rocks more carefully. At that point we needed a name for the hard black rocks that were obviously not marble but something else, and "basalt" finally had something close to its modern meaning. Today the name "basalt" is quite closely constrained to a fine-grained igneous rock of a narrow range of composition.
(The term "granite" has gone through a similar evolution and is now used quite narrowly by geologists.)
OK, so going back in time from Agricola's day toward the original source of the word, what did the Romans call basanites? They appear to have used it for any dark stone that was used in buildings or monuments. The word was borrowed from the Greek language, where basanites was used to refer to touchstone. Touchstone is a term for a piece of hard rock used to test precious metals by their streak. Today we use ceramic streak plates for the purpose of testing various minerals and no longer use touchstones to test precious metals, but in old times flint or emery or even basalt were used as touchstones.
It seems that in borrowing basanites from the Greek, the Romans were using it in a sense close to the even older Egyptian word bakhan, which referred to a particular rock type used for monuments. The original bakhan-stone appears to have been, in fact, a dark graywacke—a dirty sandstone. There is no salt in basalt, and there never has been.
The rock itself that we call basalt today has had different meanings, too. Until around 1800, European geologists didn't agree that basalt was even igneous. Sure, some of it came from volcanoes but, it was argued, the thick buried beds of the stuff must have been laid down in the same universal seas that created the rest of the rocks. It could have been some sort of salt, akin to rock salt. This was the best thinking of smart people who had barely invented the rudiments of chemistry and had no tools more powerful than hand lenses and rhetoric. But the "salt" part is pure coincidence, and a reminder that not everything in the language needs to make sense.
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