The Salt Saga: White Gold of the Alps (2020)

The "white gold" brought riches and wealth, technological innovation, migration, cultural exchange and early globalization, as early as 2,500 years ago. This ARTE documentary sheds some fascinating light on the history of the salt mine in Hallstatt. The life of the prehistoric people is resurrected in this documentary with lavish reenactments and animations. Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut in Upper Austria is one of the world's oldest and best documented industrial regions. Today, Hallstatt is a World Heritage Site. Salt has been extracted here in huge dimensions for about 7,000 years. For more than a hundred years, the world renowned archaeological site in Hallstatt, that gave its name to a whole age in European history, the early Iron Age, has been at the center of the research carried out at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. The current focus of scientific research is on the cemetery, salt mining and the economic area. The prehistoric finds - preserved in the salt over thousands of years - have astonishing stories to tell. The saline springs in the Hallstatt mountain were discovered by Stone Age hunters that had been led there by the animals they had been tracking. Even 2,500 years ago, the people were indebted to the "white gold" for bringing them riches, wealth, technological innovation, migration, cultural exchange and early globalization. The history of salt mining in Hallstatt is brought to life again in a mixture of fiction and science, lavish reenactments and animations. Drone flights above the fascinating plateaus and the Lake Hallstatt, impressive reenactments of the underground mining activities and experimental archaeology. The docu-drama combines prehistoric history with today's top-notch modern research.