Scientists bake sourdough using 5,000-year-old yeast from frozen mummy's gut

A bizarre research story is making the rounds on Reddit. Scientists took ancient yeast from the intestines of a frozen mummy known as Oetzi the Iceman and used it to bake a sourdough bread, as the AFP reported in an article posted by The Japan Times.

What happened?

A poster shared the article link to the r/NotTheOnion subreddit and titled the post, "Scientists find yeast in ancient Iceman's guts — and make bread." 

"That's one helluva sentence you got there," a user quickly reacted.

The true story centers on Oetzi, the naturally preserved mummy of a man who lived in the Alps around 3200 B.C.E. Researchers discovered him in glacier ice in 1991, the AFP noted.

Researchers at the University of Vienna and collaborating institutions said they took inactive yeast from his preserved intestines, cultured it, and then baked the sourdough bread with it.

They weren't immediately successful, but they told the AFP after three months of trial and error they landed on the right mix.

"We had a very, very good sourdough," lead study author Mohamed Sarhan claimed to the outlet.

Why does it matter?

For all its weirdness, the finding could still matter in food microbiology.

If some ancient yeast strains are capable of remaining dormant for thousands of years, they could help researchers better understand the history of fermentation and the way human food cultures changed over time.

Foods like bread, beer, and many other staples rely on microbial communities. But industrial production often depends on a comparatively limited range of standardized strains.

Studies like this may contribute to efforts to protect microbial diversity and keep older fermentation traditions from being lost to mass production.

It also overlaps with the growing "rewilding food cultures" movement. It typically emphasizes older grain varieties, local yeasts, and long-established fermentation methods.

That being said, confirming this finding fully will likely take more research. Unaffiliated researcher Nikolay Oskolkov told the AFP that the yeast samples were taken in 2010 and 2019. He stated that means there is very little evidence that this is ancient yeast.

What are people saying?

The reaction from Redditors was pretty playful.

"Keeping up with feeding my starter is so tedious, need to get me one of these prehistoric ice men," one noted. "Set it and forget it. For thousands of years."

"I guess you could say that's some seriously ancient sourdough, talk about a yeast with a history!" another remarked.

One user was surprised they didn't start with beer or wine as the first project. The researchers did confirm to the AFP that beer is "on the list."

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