HISTORY AND OTHER INFORMATION ABOUT MASTIC AS PUBLISHED BY INDEPENDENT EDITORS AND SCIENTISTS ON THE WEB Masticha is a white resin that comes from the mastic tree in the Mediterranean. It only grows on the Greek island of Hios which is fabled as Homers birthplace.

In fact, Homer would likely have chewed mastic in the same amber resinous form that we can buy it today. As food products go, mastic is about as unprocessed as you can find. A small packet of pebble-sized pieces sells for a dollar. If you take a bit and let it soften in the mouth, the coniferous flavour quickly disappears.

What remains is a very small, very durable and pliable bit of chewing gum that will last for a long time without disintegrating. It is not unlike the spruce and pine gum traditionally chawed in Canada and US. Chios, more famous perhaps for its wine (of course, in the Odyssey), for its sculpture ("School") and claimed to be prime among "Homer's" places of birth (with Smyrne) is the island which Christopher Colombo sat sail to returning, after having learned from old Chian sailors there (circa 1474-5) the secrets of the seas, and of the skies. It is because of this that on arrival "there" Colombo wrote that the mastic trees which he saw (on about Cuba?) were even larger than the ones he knew in Chios -- "el visto en la isla Xio en le Archipelago," as I read, I remember (well) years ago, in Ph. Argentis and St. Kyriakides', "H Xios para tois Gewgrafois kai Perihghtais".) Well, maybe Colombo did see the same "mastic tree" as that of Chios (same as also on Minor Asia and in the Middle East, esp. Lebanon) yet it seems just as true that the tree that "produces the resin for the gum is exclusive to Chios." (The resin "tears" in other locals hardly justify the "ponos"-"pain" from its being "cut.")