Before there was chewing gum, people used to chew on other things. The ancient Greeks chewed on mastic gum. Mastic gum is a thick goo that comes out of the mastic tree. The Mayan people used to chew on the hardened sap from the sapodilla tree. Northern Native Americans chewed on the sap from spruce trees, which is called "chicle". 

       In 1848, John B. Curtis saw someone chewing on chicle. Curtis created the first chewing gum from the chicle of spruce trees. But the chicle didn't last long. It didn't stay chewy. It got hard too quickly. In 1900, a man named Louis Mahle wanted to make something better - that didn't dry out so quickly! Mahle took Curtis's idea and created a new chewing gum that was   candy-coated with different flavors and called his gum "Chiclet", after the          chicle that had been loved by so many people over the years.