Salt traders check a camel load at Berahile, a half-way stop between the blistering heat of the Danakil Depression and the bracing air of the Ethiopian Highlands.Salt is hewn from deposits that are 1,600 feet thick. They owe their origin in the low-lying Danakil Depression to the separation of the Red Sea by a barrier of basaltic rock ten thousand years ago. The gradual evaporation of the trapped seawater ultimately produced a natural resource that man has mined for more than two thousand years.Before the introduction of the silver Maria Theresa dollar from Arabia to Ethiopia, salt blocks were the currency of the land..