Scientists Bake Bread Using 5,300-Year-Old Yeast From Ötzi the Iceman

Five thousand years after a Bronze Age hunter fell to an arrow on an alpine glacier, the microorganisms that colonized his frozen body have been coaxed back into life — not merely as a curiosity, but as a working sourdough culture capable of leavening bread. Researchers in Bolzano have cultivated yeast from Ötzi the Iceman's remains, raising questions that stretch from the nature of preservation itself to the porous boundary between the ancient world and our own. Whether these organisms are truly millennia old or represent more recent contamination remains an open and humbling question — one t