They’re Making Ötzi The Iceman Show Feet

When I first saw the press release announcing that scientists had harvested yeast from the remains of Ötzi the 5,000-year-old iceman and used it to make a sourdough bread, I admit I was not terribly moved. The announcement smelled like a publicity stunt designed to get Ötzi back in the headlines—as if he does not get enough coverage as is! Ötzi the iceman makes the news more than any other 5,000-year-old person, given each new horrible clinical diagnosis scientists make after analyzing his mummified body with newer and newer technology.

Of course, Ötzi not the only person we know from around that time. There is Ginger, the man whose body was naturally preserved in the hot, dry sands of Gebelein in Egypt more than 5,000 years ago. There is the 4,000-year-old Cashel Man, who appears to have been violently sacrificed in a bog. But have you heard of Ginger? Have you heard of the Cashel Man? No. You have only heard of Ötzi. I do not mean this as a slight against the iceman. Rather, I mean to suggest that he makes headlines on his own terms, by which I mean the fact that his body is a Pandora's box of medical maladies. Ötzi has never needed to become bread to go viral.

As such, I was prepared to close the tab spreading the good word of Ötzi's yeasts. But then I saw the publicity photo the researchers had chosen to accompany this paper, which was published in Microbiome , a paper that found four cold-adapted yeasts that survived in the sub-zero temperatures of the iceman's tummy. The photo was, to me, even more shocking than the revelation of the yeasts. It was a crisp close-up of the iceman's glossy feet.