Scientists harvest yeast from Iceman's remains, bake Alpine bread

Oetzi the Iceman, a mummified figure discovered on the Austria-Italy border more than three decades ago, has yielded an unexpected gift: viable yeast cells that lived in his gut for millennia and survived the freeze. According to Phys.org, scientists have cultured the microbe and used it to bake bread, revealing that fermentation practices may stretch back to the Bronze Age. The discovery places Valle d'Aosta and the surrounding Alpine region at the center of an emerging scientific narrative about ancient food technology and microbial survival.

The Iceman was killed by an arrow in the back more than 5,300 years ago, before the Egyptian pyramids were built, according to Phys.org. His body was preserved in ice on a high mountain pass, and modern analysis of his remains has become a window into Bronze Age Alpine life. The yeast, which survived in the frozen remains, tells a story about the microbes that inhabited the human gut in prehistory and the foods that sustained mountain populations.