In the municipality of Alburquerque, on the southern coast of Bohol Island, a small group of men keep alive a fire that could die with them. They pour brine into clay pots suspended over burning wood, wait hours for the vessels to begin cracking, and when the heat has done its work, they overturn the pots and break open the brown crust with their bare hands.
Inside, a white sphere emerges — compact, smooth-edged, quietly perfect. It is not a fossil. It is salt.
This is asin tibuok, a Cebuano phrase meaning “intact salt,” though most of the world knows it by another name: dinosaur egg salt, named for the ovoid shape it forms as it hardens inside the clay pot.
It is considered one of the rarest salts on the planet, produced almost exclusively on the island of Bohol. Yet for centuries, it was utterly commonplace.
A Centuries-Old Technique — and the Law That Hastened Its Decline
Asin tibuok was first documented in the 17th century by Spanish chroniclers, who called it “salt of the Visayas.”
Its production begins with coconut husks soaked in seawater for several months, then dried and burned. The ash is then mixed with seawater to produce a brine, which is boiled in clay pots until the salt crystallizes.
Ethnoarchaeologist Andrea Yankowski, who has studied the practice for two decades, argues that the tradition predates the arrival of the Spanish. In 2019, she found that only a handful of mangasinays — as the salt makers are known — remained, and she began documenting their work in earnest.
The production process takes roughly four months, demands considerable physical strength and a highly specialized body of knowledge that, until recently, had never been systematically recorded. Not until 2022 did a project funded by the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Program document the full process for the first time.
Asin tibuok has a sharp, mildly alkaline flavor with smoky and fruity undertones. It is used as a finishing salt — grated directly over food just before serving.
For centuries, asin tibuok functioned as currency between Bohol’s coast and its interior: salt-making families bartered it with inland communities for rice and agricultural goods. It was a cornerstone of the local economy, produced by roughly a hundred families along the island’s southern shore.
That balance began to fracture in the mid-20th century and collapsed entirely in 1995.
That year, the Philippine government passed a law requiring that all salt sold commercially in the country be iodized. As a result, fewer and fewer families continued producing asin tibuok. A craft that was already physically demanding and economically precarious had now lost its legal standing as well. Younger generations saw no reason to continue.
The turning point came unexpectedly. In 2015, tourists and students visiting the area began writing about the salt on their blogs, catching the attention of a Filipino-American entrepreneur based in California, who placed an order for 1,000 pieces. It took the family a full year to fill the order — proof that demand existed, even if the gap between that demand and a sustainable production model remained enormous.
From TikTok to UNESCO
That online visibility accelerated what word of mouth had started. In 2021, Filipino YouTuber Erwan Heussaff published a video about the salt-making process that reached millions of viewers.
In 2023, asin tibuok appeared in an episode of the Filipino Netflix series Replacing Chef Chico. Young chefs and content creators began championing the salt and its story — and what had been a nostalgic local curiosity became a culinary rarity with international reach.
The attention paid off. In March 2024, the Philippine government repealed the requirement that asin tibuok comply with iodization regulations, removing one of the primary legal barriers that had held back production for nearly three decades. Months later came what would prove the most significant milestone yet.
In December 2025, UNESCO inscribed the practice of making asin tibuok on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. It is the first culinary tradition from the Philippines to appear on any of UNESCO’s intangible heritage lists.
The inscription is more than an honor: it opens the door to targeted support — including the passing on of traditional knowledge, documentation, research, and direct economic aid for producers.
What asin tibuok faces today is the same crisis threatening dozens of traditional crafts around the world: how to pass the knowledge on.
The mangasinays are aging, and for decades, younger generations have gravitated toward less demanding livelihoods. The salt survived because a few people refused to let it go.
What UNESCO’s recognition cannot answer is whether that effort will be enough — whether the next generation will learn to break open a clay pot with their bare hands and find inside something no factory can replicate.
