Chewing gum seems like a thoroughly modern habit, the kind of thing sold next to the checkout counter. But people were working their jaws on chewy substances thousands of years before anyone invented a wrapper. The story of gum starts in the Stone Age and winds through ancient empires, frontier America, and a failed attempt to make rubber.
So how did it begin? People have chewed gum-like substances since the Neolithic period, using natural tree resins and tars. The modern gum industry took off in the United States in the 1800s, first with spruce gum and then with chicle, a natural gum from a tropical tree, which inventor Thomas Adams turned into a commercial product in 1871.
Stone Age Chewers
In Kierikki, Finland, archaeologists found chewing gum made from birch bark tar that's about 5,000 years old, complete with tooth imprints. That tar is believed to have antiseptic properties and other medicinal benefits.
The ancient Greeks chewed mastic gum, made from the resin of the mastic tree, which may have been used to help keep mouths healthy. In the Americas, the Maya and Aztecs used chicle, a natural tree gum, both as a gum-like chew and as a glue to stick objects together.
Spruce Gum and Sugar Dipping
In North America, Native Americans chewed resin from spruce trees, and New England settlers picked up the habit. In 1848, John B. Curtis began selling the first commercial chewing gum, called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum.
Around 1850, a gum made from paraffin wax arrived and soon became more popular than spruce gum. These early gums weren't very sweet, so chewers would often keep a plate of powdered sugar nearby and dip their gum again and again.
Not every early gum was a treat. In 1869, an Ohio dentist named William Semple filed an early gum patent. His gum was meant to clean teeth and strengthen the jaw, and its ingredients included chalk and powdered licorice root.
A General and a Failed Experiment
Modern chewing gum got its start in the 1860s thanks to an unlikely pair. Former Mexican president General Antonio López de Santa Anna brought chicle to New York and gave it to Thomas Adams, who hoped to use it as a substitute for rubber.
The rubber idea flopped. But Adams cut the chicle into strips and in 1871 began marketing it as Adams New York Chewing Gum. Around the same time, Louisville pharmacist John Colgan created the first flavored gum, mixing in a balsam-tree flavoring called tolu to make "Taffy Tolu."
Popular brands quickly followed, including licorice-flavored Black Jack in 1884, Chiclets in 1899, and Wrigley's Spearmint Gum. All three are still around today.
Gum Goes Global
Gum really spread around the world during World War II, when American soldiers received it as part of their rations and traded it with locals. By the 1960s, American manufacturers had switched from chicle to cheaper synthetic rubber bases.
Not everyone was a fan. Singapore banned chewing gum in 1992, partly because discarded gum was getting stuck in the sliding doors of its trains. Today, its sidewalks are famously gum-free, unlike London's Oxford Street, where a 2000 study counted about a quarter of a million blobs stuck to the pavement.
So the next time you unwrap a stick of gum, remember you're joining a tradition that's older than the pyramids. Just please don't leave it on the sidewalk.
