Somewhere between 9,500 and 9,900 years ago, three Scandinavian teenagers were hanging out, chewing gum after a meal. Specifically, they were chewing pitch or tar made from the bark of birch trees. Many millennia removed, archaeologists analyzed the spit out wads and discovered what the teens had recently eaten (red fox, hazelnut, deer, and apple), as well as the state of their oral health (poor). The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2024. It’s among the earliest known examples of chewing gum in the archaeological record, but it’s far from the only one. Humans have been gnawing on rubbery bits of indigestible gunk for a long, long time. Gum chewing independently arose across different cultures and regions at different times.