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>> Too much salt stops autolysis altogether; too little invites botulism.

>>Our garum is very salty, very concentrated

Yup. Salt was very expensive in Roman times. (It is linked to "salary" for good reason.) I'd bet money that nobody today would dare sell or even make something anywhere close to the actual ancient product, the cheap low-salt stuff used by normal people. Botulism is not something to toy around with.

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Well meat/fish have always been scarce enough to be high cost as well. So using salt to preserve them is a good use of it.

In many poor regions of the world salted fish products are the dominant animal protein.

Plus, this was for making a condiment. You don't lose the salt, it still gets added to your food before you eat it.

Exactly. If salt is scarce, cutting it into a condiment is a great way to stretch it and use it.

There's no indication that low-salt garum was a thing. That would just be horribly spoiled fish juice.

People probably weren't in the habit of consuming things that reliably made them sick or dead.

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