Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
People in Poland find old pots. The pots are very old. They are 4,500 years old.
Inside the pots, there are tiny bits of food and drink. Scientists test them.
The drink looks like old beer. People long ago made it to drink and to share.
This is the oldest beer trace found in that part of Poland.
- pot
- a container made of clay used to hold things
- old
- from a long time ago
- year
- twelve months of time
- drink
- a liquid you swallow
- beer
- a drink made from grain that has some alcohol
- scientist
- a person who studies the world by testing it
- share
- to give part of something to others
- find
- to see something for the first time
Level 2 — Elementary
Scientists in Poland have found very old traces of beer in clay pots. The pots are about 4,500 years old. They come from two sites in the northeast of the country: Supraśl and Skrzeszew.
The pots were made by people of the Bell Beaker culture. This was a group of people in Europe near the end of the Stone Age. Their pots had a special bell shape and beautiful patterns.
When scientists tested the pots, they found small bits of fermented drink. Fermenting is the process that turns sugary liquids into beer or wine. Some samples looked like a simple beer; others looked like a stronger, mixed drink, sometimes called Nordic grog.
Researchers think the drink was used at funerals or other ceremonies. People may have shared it during important meetings. The find shows that beer-making was already part of life in this area long ago.
- trace
- a tiny remaining sign of something
- clay
- soft earth that can be shaped and dried hard
- site
- a place where something is found or built
- culture
- a group of people sharing language, art, and beliefs
- ferment
- to change sugar into alcohol using yeast or bacteria
- ceremony
- a formal event with a special meaning
- funeral
- a ceremony to honor someone who has died
- Stone Age
- an early period when people used stone tools
Level 3 — Intermediate
A team from the University of Warsaw and Lodz University of Technology has identified the oldest chemical traces of beer-like alcoholic drinks ever found in northeastern Poland. The researchers analyzed shards from broken pottery linked to funerary and ritual features at the sites of Supraśl in the Northern Podlasie Lowland and Skrzeszew in the Mazovian Lowland. Their study appears in the journal Archaeometry.
The vessels belong primarily to the Bell Beaker phenomenon, one of prehistoric Europe's most distinctive archaeological horizons. The culture spread across much of the continent in the second half of the third millennium BCE and is named for the elegant bell-shaped pots its makers produced.
Using organic residue analysis, the scientists detected molecular markers consistent with fermented cereal-based drinks. Some samples align with a beer-like beverage, while others suggest a more complex mixed-fermentation drink sometimes described as Nordic grog. The chemistry indicates that brewing knowledge was already established in this borderland between northern and eastern Europe.
Researchers caution that residues alone cannot tell us exactly who drank what, or in what amounts. But the contexts—graves, communal pits, ceremonial areas—suggest that the beverages played a role in negotiations among the living and rituals for the dead, much as alcohol does in many later cultures.
- shard
- a sharp broken piece of pottery or glass
- funerary
- relating to a funeral or burial
- ritual
- a set of actions performed in a special order, often for religious or social reasons
- phenomenon
- a remarkable or notable event or pattern
- residue
- a small amount of substance left after a process
- molecular
- relating to molecules, the small chemical units of matter
- borderland
- a region between two places or cultures
- communal
- shared by a group rather than belonging to one person
Level 4 — Advanced
A collaborative team from the University of Warsaw and Lodz University of Technology has reported the earliest molecular evidence of fermented alcoholic beverages in the northeastern reaches of Poland, drawn from pottery sherds recovered at the funerary and ceremonial sites of Supraśl in the Northern Podlasie Lowland and Skrzeszew in the Mazovian Lowland. The findings, published in Archaeometry, extend the documented chemistry of brewing on the European North-East plain by several centuries.
The ceramic assemblage is attributable predominantly to the Bell Beaker phenomenon, the late-third-millennium BCE horizon whose distinctive campaniform vessels mark a vast swathe of prehistoric Europe. Although the culture's expansion has been variously characterized as migratory, ideological, or commercial, its ritual practices appear to have included the conspicuous consumption of fermented beverages, a behaviour now newly substantiated for this borderland.
Through targeted organic residue analysis, the investigators identified lipid and carbohydrate biomarkers consistent with cereal-based fermentation. Several specimens further preserve compounds suggestive of a more elaborate mixed-fermentation beverage—the so-called Nordic grog tradition documented elsewhere in Bronze Age Scandinavia—implying a degree of recipe sophistication that earlier reconstructions of the Polish Neolithic had not foregrounded.
The authors are appropriately circumspect: chemistry alone cannot illuminate the social grammar of consumption. Yet the depositional contexts—graves, pits, ceremonial enclosures—are eloquent. Whoever the drinkers were, they appear to have used fermented liquids to lubricate negotiations among the living and to mediate the symbolic frontiers between the living and the dead, a function alcohol has played in countless human societies since.
- sherds
- broken pieces of pottery, especially from archaeology
- campaniform
- shaped like a bell
- ideological
- relating to a system of ideas or beliefs
- conspicuous
- highly visible or noticeable
- lipid
- a fat or fat-like substance studied in chemistry
- biomarker
- a measurable molecule that points to a particular biological process
- circumspect
- cautious; aware of possible consequences
- enclosure
- an area surrounded by a barrier or boundary
