Gum shoe investigators leave sour taste

With Alex Lindsay your columnist who has been there & done it.

January 2008

Those grubby-fingered time travelers, the archeologists, never cease to amaze us with their astonishing finds - and the even more astonishing deductions they make from them.

Their latest earth shattering discovery is that our Neanderthal ancestors spent a lot of their time mumbling through a mouthful of chewing gum. And there was us thinking all those grunts and guttural noises were just part of the language of the day.

Yes, it appears old Zog Zog the caveman was the Marlon Brando of his era, muttering “I coulda’ been a contender” through a gobful of his favourite minty tree bark as he sat on the edge of his rock watching the finals of the World Lady Clubbing Contest.

A 23-year-old British archaeology student, Sarah Pickin, found what is thought to be a 5,000-year old piece of chewing gum during a dig in Finland. Of course, it has probably lost a lot of its flavour by now. I know mine does after just half a day stuck behind my ear.

Nevertheless this find is regarded with huge interest in archaeological circles. If only because it points to the origins of one of our most anti-social habits that has swept the world like a rampant plague.

The Neolithic delicacy is a lump of birch bark tar. Pickin’s tutor, Professor Trevor Brown of the University of Derby, observed: “It’s particularly significant because well defined tooth imprints were found on the gum. Birch bark contains phenols, which are antiseptic compounds.”

It is thought our distant ancestors chewed it as an antiseptic to treat gum infections as well as glue for repairing pots. A pretty versatile medicine as it turns out.

Nowadays, chewing gum has become more of a fashion accessory, along with its fellow traveler the cigarette. It became an icon for baseball players, movie stars, footballers. It speaks of toughness, of youth and rebellion and “attitude,” of Humphrey Bogart and James Dean.

It also speaks of yucky blobs of goo stuck to the soles of your new trainers after an unsuccessful game of hopscotch through the urban minefield of discarded gum that is any city street.

Worldwide, we chew our way through about $19billion worth of gum a year. Britons alone chomp 935 million packs a year. Most of it seems to end up on the sidewalk or on cinema seats.

The British authorities spend the equivalent of $380 million a year scraping it off the streets. Special heat guns have been drafted in to coax it off the tarmac. The government has even considered giving road sweepers the power to levy on-the-spot fines on offenders, but shelved the plan because of the massive scale of the problem.

Some governments have taken even more Draconian measures. For 12 years Singaporeans lived in fear of being caught committing the most heinous crime of chewing gum. The sale, manufacture, import, and especially the use of gum was banned by the city state’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew because it was fouling the streets and turning up on buses and subway trains.

The city is renowned for its cleanliness and pristine streets, and its inhabitants live in a strictly controlled environment where they can be fined for such trivial crimes as spitting or failing to flush a public lavatory. They faced heavy fines for gum chewing, and even possession. A thriving bootleg industry grew up smuggling the dreaded goo across the border from Malaysia, and people surreptitiously chewed at home. Presumably with the lights out…

Pssst…why don’t you come round to our place tonight, we’ve got half a K of Wrigley’s double spearmint. Fresh across the border from Malasia, from the heart of The Gooey Triangle. I can promise you a good time.”
Sorry, no can do. We’re under surveillance ever since the last raid. Had to flush a 200 carton down the toilet when we heard them smashing the door down. Now it’s backed up with gum and we’re flooded out.

But trying to halt the onward advance of chewing gum is like trying to confront a division of Panzers with a popgun. Especially when international politics becomes involved. Singapore has been forced to relax the ban because it had become a sticking point in its free trade talks with America.

Now, “therapeutic” chewing gum can be sold, but only at pharmacies, and buyers have to produce identity cards because only registered “users” can purchase it. Pharmacists face up to two years in jail and a hefty fine for giving the dreaded substance to the wrong people.

It sounds a bit like heroin addicts being put on a Methadone treatment to get them off the habit. I wonder what we could give the chewing gum junkies when they are going cold turkey? How about birch bark tar?

There are of course some therapeutic claims for chewing gum. Some dentists believe that it produces extra saliva which helps combat plaque and bad breath. Many doctors think that it aids digestion and helps control weight. Some boffin somewhere calculated that if you chewed all your waking hours for a year you would lose about six kilos.

But a new slimming chewing gum undergoing tests could be the answer to every fatty’s prayers.

Researchers are studying a hormone called pancreatic polypeptide –PP for short – which occurs naturally in the gut. When we eat, the hormone is released and sends a message to the brain to tell us to stop. In my own case it seems to work perfectly, except in matters involving chocolate.

PP cannot be taken in tablet form because the digestive system would break it down before it had any effect. So they are trying to incorporate it in gum, and predict a five per cent weight loss.

Gum has been found to have some odd therapeutic effects. English movie star Emily Watson could not for the life of her get to grips with a Chicago accent for her part as a bumbling detective in the film Trixie. Then she started chewing gum, and in no time at all she was sounding like Bugsy Moran’s mum.

The Angela’s Ashes star recalled: “We sat for a couple of days working on the dialect and I’m thinking: I’m never going to get this. Then I started chewing during the lessons and it really helped. It’s a great release that suddenly makes you feel kind of blah.”

Some people go to astonishing lengths to feed their habit. Pop diva Mariah Carey demands, among the luxuries that must be placed in her dressing room, a special attendant to dispose of her used chewing gum. Her other demands include two air purifiers, a puppy, kittens, a tea service for eight, a Honey Bear pack of honey, Cristal champagne and one box of bendy straws.

The special attendant could be on to a winner here. For there is a good market in cast-off celebrity gum.

Movie star Jessica Simpson handed her half-chewed gum to an extra on the set of the film Employee of the Month asking the girl to get rid of it for her. But the wiley extra saw the chance of a quick buck and kept it. Jessica Simpson’s saliva must be worth something reasoned the enterprising girl. Soon, the lump of gum was fetching big bucks on eBay.

Chewing gum. It’s been a curse, it’s been a blessing. But it’s never going to go away.
And we owe it all to two men.

The first is General Santa Ana, former Mexican president and the victor of the battle of the Alamo. Just after the American Civil War, he introduced chicle, a rare ingredient from Mexico, to an inventor in New York. Both men were down on their luck, and cooked up a plan to put the ostensibly useless substance to good use. The chicle became the basis of what we now know as chewing gum.

And the other player in this long running human drama? Why, of course – that unknown, unsung caveman who left us his lump of half masticated tree bark in a cold, windswept forest in ancient Finland.