Oldest Alcohol Traces in Northeastern Poland Found in 4,500-Year-Old Vessels

The oldest traces of alcoholic beverages in northeastern Poland have been identified inside 4,500-year-old ceramic vessels, offering a rare chemical glimpse into how Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age communities gathered, mourned and marked identity.

The discovery does not come from a tavern, brewery or settlement kitchen. It comes from broken pottery linked to funerary and ritual features at Supraśl in the Northern Podlasie Lowland and Skrzeszew in the Mazovian Lowland. In those fragments, researchers from the University of Warsaw and Lodz University of Technology detected molecular residues pointing to fermented drinks resembling beer or a more complex mixed beverage sometimes described as Nordic grog.

The study, published in Archaeometry and reported by the PAP, pushes the chemical evidence for fermented alcoholic drinks in this borderland region back to the second half of the third millennium BC. The vessels become witnesses to a world in which drink, ceremony and long-distance cultural contact may have been closely intertwined.

A ritual drink preserved in clay

The pottery belongs mainly to the Bell Beaker phenomenon, one of prehistoric Europe’s most recognizable archaeological horizons. Named after its inverted bell-shaped cups, the Bell Beaker tradition spread widely between roughly 2800 and 1800 BC. Its objects often occur in graves and ritual deposits, where pottery, amber ornaments, tools and human remains could form symbolic assemblages.

At Supraśl, the analysed vessels came from four funerary-ritual features associated with the Bell Beaker phenomenon. Another vessel fragment came from Skrzeszew, from a ritual context connected with the early Trzciniec Cultural Sphere. That later sample matters because it suggests that alcohol-related practices may have continued, changed or been absorbed into emerging Bronze Age traditions.

To read the vessels, the team turned to organic residue analysis. Thirteen pottery sherds were selected from a larger group of 43 fragments because the method is destructive and the artefacts are valuable. Samples were examined using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, a technique capable of identifying ancient organic compounds preserved within ceramic fabric.

The chemistry behind ancient alcohol

What emerged was not a single smoking-gun molecule. Ancient alcohol is difficult to identify because many fermentation markers are small, fragile and can also appear through other processes. Instead, the case rests on patterns. The vessels contained combinations of fatty acids, plant sterols and organic acids that, taken together, point toward fermented beverages.

At least nine of the 13 vessels appear to have once held alcoholic drinks. The residues included lactic acid, acetic acid and levulinic acid, all associated with fermentation or the breakdown of fermented products. Some samples also contained compounds linked to bacterial and yeast activity. Others preserved azelaic acid, which occurs naturally in wheat and barley, along with vanillin, which in this context may be connected to cereal transformation during malting, drying or heating.

The chemical picture is especially intriguing because this part of northeastern Poland was not a strongly agricultural landscape at the time. Local evidence for cereal cultivation appears much later, with Lusatian Culture communities in the Late Bronze Age. If wheat or barley contributed to these drinks, the ingredients may have arrived through exchange networks from regions where cereal agriculture was already developed, such as Kuyavia or the Chełmno Land.

That possibility changes the story. A drink consumed at the edge of the North and East European Plains may have carried more than flavour. It may have carried contact, status and memory. The vessels suggest that people in this forested borderland were not isolated from the currents of prehistoric Europe.

Beer, grog or something in between

The beverage itself probably did not resemble modern beer. The researchers describe it cautiously as beer-like or as a possible Nordic grog-type mixture. Such drinks may have combined cereals with fruits, herbs, resins or other plant ingredients. Benzoic acid found in many samples may point to fruits such as cherries or raspberries, while resin-related compounds raise the possibility that tree resins were used for preservation, flavour or aroma.

One can imagine a vessel placed in a ritual feature, not as refuse but as part of a meaningful act. The drink inside may have been sour, aromatic and cloudy. It may have been consumed during a funeral, poured as an offering or shared among people negotiating alliances, grief and belonging. Archaeology rarely recovers such moments directly, but chemistry can sometimes leave a faint aftertaste.

The Skrzeszew vessel adds a further layer. Although it belongs to the early Trzciniec Cultural Sphere rather than the Bell Beaker phenomenon itself, its stylistic links to Bell Beaker pottery and its residue profile suggest that the drinking tradition may have survived beyond the first arrival of Bell Beaker practices. It hints at continuity in a region where cultural borders were porous.

The authors stop short of claiming a fixed recipe or a fully reconstructed drinking ceremony. The evidence is chemical, not literary. Still, the conclusion is powerful: by the late third millennium BC, people in this northeastern European border zone were using ceramic vessels in ways that involved fermented alcoholic beverages.

In the end, the vessels from Supraśl and Skrzeszew do more than extend the history of alcohol in Poland. They reveal how a few ceramic fragments can preserve the traces of taste, ceremony and exchange after 4,500 years. What remained in the clay was not the drink itself, but the shadow of a social world gathered around it.

Manasterski, D., K.Januszek, A.Rosiak, A.Cetwińska, and J.Kałużna-Czaplińska. 2026. “The Oldest Traces of Alcoholic Beverages in the Border Zone of the North and East European Plains.” Archaeometry68, no. 2: 153–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.70024.

Cover Image Credit: Fragments of Bell Beaker vessels from ritual features at Supraśl. Miron Bogacki.