The prehistory of beer in Europe

The prehistory of the European beer brewing basin

 A. The Neolithic period in Europe

The Neolithic expansion of the Cardial Ware and Linear Pottery cultures in Europe

The European beer brewing basin can be qualified as a secondary basin if we consider that three major and related innovations originated in South-West Asia for this region of the world: archaic brewing, the cultivation of cereals and the transition of populations to a Neolithic way of life.

Cereal growing and livestock farming came from Anatolia, Syria and the Levant around 6500 BC, following two routes of diffusion in Europe. The route  of the Mediterranean coast passes through Cyprus, southern Anatolia, Greece, the Dalmatian coast and southern Italy. The Balkan route passes through the straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, moving towards Central Europe and up the Danube basin towards Northern Europe. These two main axes of diffusion reflect two archaeological cultures marked by a style of pottery, the so-called Cardial or Printed Culture and the so-called Linear Pottery Culture or LBK (LinearBandKeramik).

A third diffusion of the Neolithic period originated north of the Black Sea and seems, without any certainty to date, to have an autochthonous origin on the fertile tchernoziom lands between Dnieper and Volga.

The Neolithic advance in Europe after Ammerman 1971 (fig. 6). Dates are B.P. (date BP - 2000 ≈ date BC). Red dots = archaeological sites

The Mediterranean flow is spreading at a regular rate, the modelling of which calculates the value ≈1km/year between Anatolia and the extreme Atlantic tip of Europe, calculations reflecting archaeological data (Fort, Pujol, Cavalli-Sforza 2004). On the contrary, the progression of the Danubian flow is not regular. Three major halts affect the spread of the main Neolithic features heading towards northern Europe: around 6200 BC in central Europe, 5400 BC towards Scandinavia and 5700 BC towards the northern Europe. They coincide with cold climatic episodes and presumably the adaptations of plants to cultivation and agricultural techniques, and the main évolutions of social strategies. The neolithisation of Europe, well understood as a whole, is the subject of much research to detail its regional modalities and to better understand the interactions between farmers and hunter-gatherers, the latter having adapted and maintained for almost 4 millennia.

Grindstone, toast, cereals and small apples, clay pots and wooden vessels found at Neolithic sites in Switzerland

The most recent genetic studies show that the initial human group from Anatolia is homogeneous (EEF group, Early European Farmers). In the Balkans, it intermingles with hunter-gatherers (7-11%) before splitting into Mediterranean and Danubian groups (Haak et al. 2010). Having reached the Atlantic coast two millennia later, these two populations retain a great genetic homogeneity. Miscegenation with hunter-gatherers encountered along the way has remained very limited for the male population. The most common lineage of Y chromosomes in the Neolithic male population comes from a single Anatolian source in the early Neolithic. Corsica and Sardinia are a sanctuary of this ancient DNA. On the other hand, mitochondrial DNA transmitted exclusively by females is more diversified and contains a significant proportion of genes from hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic. These results suggest that male farmers mated with indigenous women hunter-gatherers much more often than female farmers mated with hunter-gatherers. Explaining this phenomenon generates much speculation. We are far from understanding the social behaviour of Neolithic societies, often abusively compared to the so called "primitive" societies described by ethnologists.

Reconstitutions of Ötzi (who lived in the Alpine Copper Age around 2590 BC), bearer of the haplogroup ADN-Y G2a which predominates among the first farming communities

These same genetic studies show that among the first farming communities in Balkan and Central Europe, the female population is larger. The reasons for this are not obvious: higher male mortality, increasing sedentariness, polygyny, or conversely monogamy + patrilocality?

Furthermore, the genetic contribution of hunter-gatherer groups becomes significant again between 5,000 and 3,000 BC, proof on the one hand that they have not been replaced, on the other hand that interactions with farmers play a central role in the neolithisation of Europe.

The neolithisation of Europe is a complex, arrhythmic and heterogeneous process. Archaeology and genetics provide ample evidences of cultural and technical exchanges between hunter-gatherers and farming groups. DNA has revealed that Neolithic farmers mix with hunter-gatherers wherever their progress is slowed down. When agriculture is no longer a reliable food technique, farmers return to hunting and gathering, taking advantage of the hunter-gatherers' knowledge of the environment and experience. These two groups have evolved together and created new cultural configurations which partly explain the dynamism of the European neolithic phenomenon. The protohistory of the brewery is made up of back and forth, of technical progress (malting, mastery of cooking, fermentations, beer ferments (?), beer preservation) spread over several millennia and based on other technicalities (pottery, milling, kiln, etc.), and above all on the knowledge of the plant environment. Beer is not only brewed with cereals. Starchy tubers and starchy fruits are good sources of starch for the brewing process.

Model of a fortified Copper Age village at
Los Millares, Spain

The European neolithisation is characterised by specialisation in livestock farming with the development of real herds and the use of animals for work, the domestication of the horse (around 4000 BC) and the chariot, the use of the hoe and ard plough, the exploitation of flint and copper mines, a specialised craftsmanship and the manufacture of copper objects (around 7000 BC in Serbia, 3500 BC in Western Europe). The societies start to bring out hereditary upper classes and their prestigious emblems found in tombs where women, men and children of the same family or "clan" are buried side by side and richly adorned. The appearance of more specialised crafts, fortified dwellings, villages surrounded by ditches, and large funerary monuments signals at the same time a social division, armed conflicts, and the mobilisation of collective work. Places of worship are developing without it being possible to affirm that these « new cults » are organised by an elite or are the result of a collective cognitive and mental evolution.

 B. Farmers and hunter-gatherers contribute to the evolution of the beer brewing

This context brings us back to the beer brewing. Archaic beers were brewed in Europe by communities with a double heritage: that of hunter-gatherers and that of farmers from Asia. The composition of their fermented beverages inherits these characteristics: ingredients from the gathering mixed with grown cereal grains. This blend produces beers as well as wines and mead.

Around 5500 BC (Early Neolithic), archaeologists have discovered traces of these mixed beverages. At that time, primitive fermented beverages prevailed in Europe (Table 1 and Map 1):

• The oldest trace of "beer" to date (5500-4900) is found in Germany (Table 1, No. 1) and does not allow a distinction to be made between bread or starch-based beverage.
• The second oldest group (5000-4000 BC, 7 specimens) extends from Romania and Bulgaria to Spain, a very vast area representative of the Neolithic extension.
• The 3^rd group (3900-3000 BC, 10 specimens) is mainly located in Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) with an extension to Northern Europe (England, Scotland).
• The 4^th group (3000-2000 BC, 18 specimens) illustrates the final Neolithic in Northern Europe (Scotland, Denmark, Sweden), and Mediterranean Europe (Spain, Crete).
• The 5^th group belongs to the Bronze Age (2000-1000 BC, 25 specimens) and covers almost all of Western Europe.
• The 6^th group is that of the Iron Age (1000-200 BC, 18 specimens). It covers Germany, Spain and France.

The map below does not draw a geography of archaic beers in Europe. The number of archaeological sites is too limited. Above all, the analyses of fermented beverages are still too sparse to support a protohistory of their spread from Anatolia across Europe. The question of whether Europe is home to several centres of diffusion of brewing techniques is more than premature. It is still impossible to say when and where the beer family broke away from the primeval base of the blended fermented beverages.

However, some striking data can be pointed out. The "bread-beer" complex is attested as early as the 6^th millennium in the heart of Europe (site No1). The 2^nd group illustrates at the 5^th millennium both the Danube route (sites No 4, 5, 6, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Romania) and the extreme point of the Mediterranean route (sites No 2 and 3 in Spain). Brewing techniques have therefore followed these two main migration routes. With sites no. 13 and 15, starch-based fermented beverages are known in Northern Europe (England, Scotland) at a very remote time (4^th millennium).

European map of archaeological sites with ancient beer traces (see table for the details of archaeological sites by No) Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Europe with traces of beer.Table giving the detail and No of the sites

 C. A protohistory of beer in two main phases

The fisrt phase is the progressive autonomy of the 4 groups of fermented beverages which separate from their primaval base, the old fermented undifferenciated cocktail. The second phase allows the beer group to specialise itself following one of the six different brewing methods.

Andrew Sherratt has focused on technical inventions that emerged after the first wave of neolithisation which included primitive agriculture, livestock farming and partial sedentarisation. A "Second Neolithic Revolution", a second wave originating again in South-West Asia around 4500 BC, have reached Europe by the same routes taken 2 millennia before. It brought dairy products, wool, animal traction, wheels and the use of fermented beverages or narcotics. This constituted a new stage in the exploitation of the environment. Given the very old dates of the fermented beverages recorded in the Table, it is doubtful that the use of primitive fermented beverages, more or less undifferentiated, waited until the 5^th millennium to appear in Europe. Archaeology proves that they were more precocious in Europe, attested already in Central Europe during the mid 6^th millenium.

Nevertheless, the specialisation of the primitive fermented beverages, their split from the primival base, could correspond to this Second Neolithic Revolution such as explained by Sherratt: an acceleration of social transformations through new techniques. Having become autonomous, the group of the beers as fermented beverages based on starch mainly, may well have speed up collective practices of alcohol consumption and at the same time promote the cultivation of cereals for brewing. From the 3^rd millennium onwards, traces of beer are often discovered in ritual contexts: tombs, pits of ritual deposits, ceremonial sites, etc. (No 11, 23, 25-28, 31-35, 37-40, 44-46, 50-51, 53-54, 57, 60, …).

Typical Bell-Beaker wares

In Eastern Europe, this "Second Neolithic Revolution" meets a new wave of human migration from the eastern steppes. This phenomenon, highlighted by genetic studies, meant that groups of nomadic pastoralists mixed with European farmers and then replaced nearly 60% of the male lines of Neolithic farmers before the Bronze Age, around 3000 BC. The European Neolithic is thus punctuated by two major migrations: the arrival of the first farmers in the Balkans around 6500 BC, followed by the arrival of pastoralists from the eastern steppes around 3000 BC. This second migration is attributed to the proto-Indo-Europeans originating from the Pontic steppes extending north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (Yamnaya culture). These vast movements of people and cultures from Eastern Europe coincide with the rapid expansion of the Bell Beaker Culture (Bell-shaped pottery, Bell-Beaker or GBK) throughout Europe. This major event has an unforeseen consequence: the arrival in Europe of fermented milk, the 4^th beverage forming the basis of primitive fermented beverages.

In 2018, a major study of genomic formation in South and Central Asia found that the vast majority of Indo-European speakers living in both Europe and South Asia have many ancestry groupings related to pastoralists of the Yamnaya culture. The expansion of pastoralists into Central Asia and northern India in the second millennium is linked to the question of "proto-Indo-European", the ancestral language of all modern Indo-European peoples.

Our investigation is now in the hands of linguists. Indo-European peoples (here we tell about speakers of the Indo-European languages) shed new light on the archaic brewing in Europe. According to the researchers, they spread from the Eurasian steppe around 4000-3500 years ago, or from Anatolia around 7000-6500 years ago. These dates more or less coincide with those of geneticists for Eurasia, but not for Anatolia. Their fermented drinks? Beer (*haelut-), mead (*med^hu-), wine (*woino/*weino) and fermented milk (*súleh_a-). When the Indo-European vocabulary distinguishes these 4 fermented drinks, they then constitute 4 groups of dictinct beverages that have split off from the primeval foundation of the combined fermented drinks.

Which one is the oldest?

Indo-European linguistics stumbles over these questions of technical genesis and priority between fermented beverages. No wine without addition of honey, no beer without fruit, no fermented milk without yeast-bearing plants specialising in the alcoholic fermentation of lactose, and so forth. According to the geographical area (Indo-Iranian, European, Central Asian), the nature of the texts and the progress of archaeological studies, one fermented beverage seems to precede the 3 others[1], however never the same one depending on the geographical area or time period. The existence of undifferentiated fermented beverages for thousands of years makes this logic obsolete: no fermented beverage precedes another one, all come from the same original base.

The question becomes: at what stage did the 4 Indo-European beverages separate from the common trunk of hybrid fermented beverages? Around 4000 BC genetics and linguistics answer together.

Europe from 4000 to 1000 BC. Eastern European cultures and migration to the West. Yamma culture spreads toward the Danube Valley and Caucasus (4000 BC). The Corded Ware Culture reaches Northen Europe (3000 BC). Then the Indo-European speakers toward western Europe and ancient India (1500 BC)  (hypothetical)

Let us return to Europe. The arrival of Indo-European pastoralists and speakers around 4000 BC initiates a slow process of specialisation of fermented beverages in Europe. Coming from the East, it spreads towards the West at an unknown speed. It is contemporary with deep social changes marked by hierarchisation, craft specialisation and new techniques. The improvement of brewing techniques is undoubtedly one of them, especially the malting of cereals, but the whole process still remains to be analysed.

Around 2000 BC, the Bronze Age witnessed other evolutions, one of which concerned brewing. Having become autonomous, the family of beers became specialised from a technical but above all a social point of view. The Celtic culture offers one example. The warlords did not drink the same beer as the submissive populations. The farmer's beer is not the clan chief's beer. Princes and war chiefs consume mead or strong beer mixed with honey. Their trading contacts with the Mediterranean world would sometimes lead them to replace this strong beer with grape wine, proof that a hierarchy of fermented beverages was already operating among the Celtic peoples. Michael Dietler (1990 and 1994) has pointed out that these drinking manners mark a strong social differentiation (beer remains the ordinary beverage of peasants and slaves) and the fact that the adoption of Mediterranean wine does not result from an imitation of Greco-Latin cultures (the symposium) but from a reinforcement of power relations within the Celtic world from 600 BC onwards[2].

The arrival of the pastors has another long-term consequence. Eastern Europe remains characterised by sour beers to this day. In modern times they are called kwas, braga, ... These are farmhouse beers, brewed at home with rye, oats, millet or so-called "poor" grains and graminae. They have an obvious link with the fermented milks of pastoralists whose descendants are found in the koumys or the kefir[3]. For its own part, Northern Europe has long maintained this tradition of domestic beers, the protohistory of which remains to be written. The Scandinavian skyr, a fermented milk, bears witness to the protohistoric link between beer and fermented lactic beverages.

The archaic traces of beer discovered in Spain are numerous and cover several millennia. They reflect the intensity of the archaeological excavations. The two great waves of European migrations can be read in the two chronological sets of the corpus: the first one (no. 2-3) arrives around the 5^th millennium, the second from the 3^rd millennium onwards and enters fully into the wave of the Bell Beaker Culture (no. 26 ff.). Here we would have for the Iberian Peninsula the schema of the 2 stages of the protohistoric evolution of brewing: initially the common base of the blended fermented beverages, then the beginning of an autonomy of the "beer" group with the more frequent and generalised use of cereals. And much later, the third stage is the specialisation of brewing techniques within this "beer" group. Nevertheless, the diagram is simplistic: Spanish and Catalan archaeologists insist on the importance of local adaptation processes (Bell Beaker culture is neither an invasion nor a tidal wave), the role of hunter-gatherers, their techniques and social strategies.

The protohistory of European beer remains a ground to be cleared. Archaeology, analyses of pottery and starch traces, carpology and palaeogenetics regularly bring new data[4]. Its study has great significance and multiple ramifications. Bread and beer make up a solid technical couple which sheds light on technical aspects of the Neolithic period such as the advancement of cereal growing and grain processing methods, the relative control of fermentation, the role of starch among all food resources. Fermented beverages are also a special gateway to social behaviour, collective events, funerary rituals, etc. Beer, an alcoholic beverage which may be psychotropic (nos. 19 to 22, 66, 74), is an object of study which combines these two approaches: that of starch-based food technologies and that of social mechanisms.

It should be remembered that the history of beer, in its long history in Europe and elsewhere, has seen episodes of recombination of techniques, and sometimes involutions of socio-economic processes. Brewing is not separated from other fermentation technologies, such as the fermentation of dairy products by nomads and viniculture. The brewery-bakery complementarity is also very strong, without being exclusive.

 D. List of archaeological witness sites in Europe known to date (2020)

List of the oldest traces of grain-based fermented beverages in Europe.  (see CARTE)

List of the oldest traces of grain-based fermented beverages in Europe.

(MAP of the ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES)       *    *    *    *       (Top of table)

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