Today, we can see people chewing gums and popping bubbles all the time but did you know that ancient people used to chew gums too?
It sounds really unbelievable that people as far back as 9000 years ago used to chew on gums too but according to a discovery back in 1993, we know that it is true. But, you could say, there were no chewing gum manufacturing plants such a long time ago.
That is correct. No one was making chewing gums as we know them today 9000 years ago. The ancients were chewing on all sort of things for their dental health including tree bark, blubber, coca leaves, spruce sap, tree resin lumps among other things.
It is believed that they knew about the medicinal properties of some of these and used to chew on them to protect their teeth and gums. Also, chewing these ‘ancient gums’ had the effect of cleaning their teeth too which was important as they didn’t have toothbrush and toothpaste back then!
The oldest chewing gum that we have found was made of birch resin and it still has the tooth prints of the person who had spat it out. This discovery was made on the island of Orust in western Swedeni in a hut thought to be a part of a Stone age community.
The discoverer, Bengt Nordqvist, then, of the Swedish National Board of Antiquities, suggested that the chewer of the gum was a teenager who was likely looking to get a buzz out of it. Researchers believe that birch gum, while probably medicinal, also gives the chewer a buzz.
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918911.000-chewing-gum-gave-stone-age-punk-a-buzz/