Ancient Ales (Dr. Patrick McGovern)

Brewing Archaeologist Michael Brown interviews Patrick McGovern, the leading archaeologist of fermented beverages and two-time discoverer of the world's oldest fermented beverages (China and Western Iran).

It's a bit long if you're not into brewing, so I'll highlight a few points.


McGovern has the view that many humans, if not all humans, are biologically adapted for drinking fermented beverages.  He also thinks that some sort of fermented beverages were made in prehistoric North America and Australia.  At least for North America, it's extremely likely there was at least a  maize-based beer like Chicha.

As materials and remains of ancient peoples are analyzed with greater sophistication, he sees great potential for this field to expand. 


In the United States, you can purchase some of these ancient recreations through a partnership between McGovern and Dogfish Head brewery, a popular microbrewery.  It's likely these Ancient Ales are available in Europe through specialty vendors as well.  [Dogfish Ancient Ales]

Stone Dagger Styles of Britain (UK Knapping Forum)

Here's a quick overview of Beaker daggers in the Island of Britain.  It is with the arrival of the Beakerfolk and metallurgy that large bi-facial daggers come into use. 

The Hurlers Frozen in Time

This from Ancient Origins:


"Hidden Fourth Circle at Mysterious 4,000-Year-Old Standing Stones in Cornwall to be Investigated"

These four stone circles are located in Cornwall, the absolute southwest 'leg' of Britain. The three stone circles are called "The Hurlers" after local legend. The Hurlers were men who played hooky from church to play hurling and were instead turned to stone.  Hurling is one of the many native stick and ball games of the Isles (and it's important to point out that sometimes the names of these different games were used interchangeably)

Why would hurlers be frozen in a circle if modern Gaelic hurling is played on a square field?  Well, some of the stick ball games are played on round fields and the 17th century Cornish concept of the game may be different from Gaelic hurling.  In any case...


I find this interesting in light of a recent post "Ritualized Ball Games of the Neolithic"






Also interesting that men would skip church, maybe suggesting the activity was frowned upon in the Christian view.

See also "Scottish Bowls"

Sexual Dimorphism of Bell Beaker Folk (and VanderWaals, 1984)

In the previous post "Being Tall" the historic purpose of swaddling infants in North Eurasia was explored and its likely use among the prehistoric Bell Beaker groups for the purpose of improving stature and form.

Beaker Mother and Infant, Camino de Yeseras (Foto a partir
de Blasco et al. 2005: Fig. 7)

There is still yet another interesting aspect when looking at the circumstantial clues pointing to the practice among early Beakers.  That is that boys appear to have been more often swaddled than girls, and by a fairly large margin if you were to accept the hypothesis that flattened occiputs are evidence of this practice.   (This by the way has been demonstrated in studies from Kurdistan to Mongolia)

Here's a long excerpt from a 1984 paper by Van der Waals, but the context is important:

In his paper 'Anthropology of Bell Beaker people', presented to the symposium, Professor Kurt Gerhardt summarized and substantiated his views on Bell Beaker physical anthropology (1976).  Gerhardt is a representative of the traditional typological approach in physical anthropology, with a keen knowledge of human genetics. He acquired fame by his definition of one specific cranial type, occurring in Bell Beaker contexts: the planoccipital steephead. At Oberried he pointed out that this planoccipital steephead was the most characteristic and numerically important type identified by him among the essentially heterogeneous complex of cranial types in Bell Beaker graves. The type had
never been found with any of the earlier Neolithic Central European groups. He based his arguments on his own research, chiefly comprising finds from Central Europe (from the Elsass to Southwest Poland), but on the basis of inspection of material published and illustrated in Crania Britannica from 1865 he was convinced that planoccipital steepheads were also represented on the British Isles. What made Gerhardt's contribution remarkable was his emphatic demonstration of a systematic sexual dimorphism. Among male 'Bell Beaker' skeletons in Central Europe, he had found more than twice the number of planoccipital steepheads than among female 'Bell Beaker' skeletons of the same area.  He furthermore noted that many of the male planoccipital steepheads had been found in the richer Bell Beaker graves, and concluded that 'this remarkable situation asked for a sociological explanation'. During the final discussion of the symposium he explained that he could only think of this situation as resulting from strong endogamy within clans, as with Medieval European high nobility. The resolution of such a social system at the end of the Bell Beaker period could account for the disappearance of the planoccipital steephead in the succeeding Unetice period.

Essentially we learn something that has been recently eluded to in Liesau et al, 2015, and that is a sociological dimension in which head shape is loosely associated with status.  In Camino de Yeseras, the flat-head mother lived a good life and was given a rich burial.  Ordinary women buried nearby lived hard lives and had modest burials.

The other aspect is the attention or preference given to the development of boys.  Throughout much of the Old World, especially the modern MENA nations, boys are nursed substantially longer than girls.  In fact, the attention disparity between genders can be cruelly stark.  The degree to which girls were swaddled compared to boys may depend on where Beaker girls fell within the sequence of male children as parents would focus attention and resources on their boys.

An interesting point to dove-tail in a later post is the apparent 'ruggedness' of Bell Beaker males.  Aside from being taller, they are also much stronger with stronger bones and stronger muscle attachments.  Obviously part of this is genetic, part of it is diet, but another aspect could be environmental.  In other words some of the skeletal evidence may point to resistance training, or at least 'feats of strength', among the warrior elite.  Back to Van der Waals:

In comparing the complete groups of the three periods Czarnetzki demonstrates that the
greatest divergence is between the Late Neolithic (=Corded Ware) and Bell Beaker groups, the smallest between Bell Beaker and Unetice groups, the divergence between Late Neolithic and Unetice being intermediate. The same pattern of divergences emerged when male individuals only were taken into consideration, but among females the divergence between Late Neolithic and the Bell Beaker period was smaller than between the late Neolithic and Unetice. In this case, there appeared to be a normal type of increase in divergence through time. In other words, the gene pool in females remained unchanged into Bell Beaker times, only then certain changes appeared to take place. During the Bell Beaker period, the introduction of a new gene flow must be inferred from the shift in the values active in the formation of epigenetic traits, a shift caused
mainly by male individuals.

Here's the irony of all of this:  everything is circular, from the Dutch hypothesis to Clarke's social continuity.  To be overly cavalier in dismissing a particular theory is to miss that often times there is a valid argument to be made, although maybe not an all encompassing explanation.  I do believe that catastrophic population changes are occurring at the end of the Neolithic, but Clarke's points aren't without merit.  Some of the skeletal quirks of Beakers could in fact be environmentally and culturally induced from the Early Bronze Age arms race:

Yet, to many of the participants the elements of convergence in the presentations of Gerhardt and Shennan were quite intriguing. David Clarke then intervened and pointed out that the convergence of ideas was only apparent. 'There is in fact a very basic division between us here', Clarke said. The question of origins . . . is part of the
questions asked by the old school, about how, when and where. The questions of greater interest and deeper explanatory meaning answer the questions why'. Clarke went on to make clear why he had a deep mistrust of all physical anthropological evidence. If I remember correctly he said it was because the skeletal material available was too much the result of heavily biasing regional circumstances, and therefore liable to generate illusory conclusions.

See also [here]



"Discontinuity, cultural evolution and the historic event"
J D VanderWaals, Proc SocAntiq Scot, 114 (1984), 1-14 [Link]

SUMMARY
Aspects of the traditional culture concept, the closely connected twin concepts of continuity
and discontinuity, and their usefulness for prehistory are reconsidered. Continuity and discontinuity
are considered as functions of the evolution of culture; it is argued that the role of the historic
element should not be overlooked.

Being Tall

In places where swaddling was recently practiced, the desired end-state was to develop infants into taller, straighter adults.  Algonquians, Mongolians and Swedes bound the child to a board in infancy which would help develop the musculature in the most erect posture.

Why they troubled to do this is simple.  Crooked, curved people are historically looked upon as the lowest social order, whilst the fully erect and tall are viewed as strong, healthy, noble.

The English word crooked, as in "Crooked Hillary" or Richard Nixon's famous retort, "I am not a crook", is to literally say that someone is a scoundrel, felon or thief.  The etymology of crook connotes a crooked (curved) person, such as a haggardly witch, a hunchback or a sickly beggar.  Parents want their children to sit up straight, walk straight, and in many places practice walking with a book on the head.

In all likelihood Beakerfolk swaddled their children based on a number of clues, and by extension they did this to make them straighter and taller.  They likely had an active understanding of the effects of swaddling and did so intentionally if they were like later peoples such as the Mongolians, who did so with the intent of improving height and posture.

When we speak of Bell Beaker brachycephaly, we are usually speaking of two separate, and not necessarily related, phenomena.  One is natural brachycephaly which is a long-term human trend, especially in the northern mammal populations.  This may have been further exaggerated due to child rearing practices of Beakers.  The other is the flattened occiput (common to many Beakers), which is entirely the result of an external factor; as I've speculated for a long time, swaddling bands, clothes and cradles. [See here]

Swaddled Beaker babies may not seem that interesting at first, but given the hypothesized severity of the practice another cultural dimension comes to light, that of physical height.

Most Beaker men across Europe seem to have been the height of the Amesbury Archer, 5.8" (176cm), more or less.  This is taken by measuring the femur, although the health of the collagen may be factored in as well (this would likely make a greater difference between many Neolithic populations).  5.7, 5.8 is the mean height of diagnostic Beakers, which is tall for the age.

Some Beaker men were very tall for the times.  Cornaclery Man, Racton Man, Gristhorpe Man and Hindow Burial 1 were all in the 6.1 to 6.3 range (186-192cm).  (There are others, but I just pulled these out of the backpocket)  Now remember, this is based on the skeletal structure alone and other factors may be at play, such as the elongation of the spine as a result of infant binding.

The curvature of the spine is measured in Cobb Angles, which would suggest a person with a "theoretically" flat back would be 3" (or 7.6cm) taller than natural.  It's difficult to know the degree to which Beaker backs were malformed by cradle boards, but their heads were definitely malformed, so low degree backs (not zero degree) are not impossible.  So with that being said, it's possible that many Bell Beakers (men and women) were even taller than their skeletal predisposition, if only by an 1 to 1.5 inches (2 to 4 cm).

Maybe, maybe not.  But people will do anything to add an inch.