Re: chew Sassafras leaves
I put another link about ancient gum in Comment #1.
Apparently, this tree pitch was used to glue basic tool parts together and also as a sealant.
So, it’s not completely clear if people chewed it for pleasure, or just for utility.
Maybe “Birch Tree Breath” guys got the most beautiful women?
Assuming, of course, that the ladies did not object to kissing a mouth full of black teeth!
This gum is the pitch from birch bark, but birch sap is quite sweet, so the pitch is probably a little sweet, too.
Birch beer is hard to find, but it’s pretty good
Birch pitch was the Gorilla Glue of the Neolithic. It was traded over a very wide range, well beyond the range of birch trees. Everything from hand axes to arrowheads needed to be glued to their wooden shaft. Birch pitch was used for the same sort of purposes that we use for our many kinds of glue. This article supports the common notion that gluing stuff was women’s work since the DNA from the birch pitch was female. Of course, it could have been a common task for everyone when they were sitting around the hearth.