Ötzi the Iceman’s Microbes Still Show Signs of Life After 5,300 Years

gizmodo ^ | Published June 2, 2026, | Ed Cara

[BenLurkin]

Research out today shows the remains of Ötzi “the Iceman” are teeming with living microorganisms.

Scientists in Italy conducted an extensive survey of Ötzi, a mummy naturally frozen in a mountain glacier for over 5,000 years. They found ample bacteria and fungi inside and on Ötzi’s body, some of which might have survived for millennia and appear to be active even today under tightly maintained storage conditions.

Since his discovery, scientists have learned much about Ötzi’s life and the Copper Age society he was a part of. That includes his last meal and the likely possibility that he was killed via an arrow to his back. The tools he was found with were also sourced from different, sometimes very distant regions, suggesting the existence of a lengthy trade route along that part of Europe.

Frank Maixner, head of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research...and his team weren’t just interested in identifying the microorganisms preserved inside his body but also those on the surface, which could include microbes inadvertently introduced to Ötzi after he was unearthed.

“First, we identified ancient gut bacteria preserved inside Ötzi that are extremely rare in people living modern, industrialized lifestyles today—though they can still be found in people with traditional, non-industrialized ways of life,” Maixner told Gizmodo. “These microbes give us a unique and precious snapshot of what the human gut looked like in the Copper Age, before industrialization reshaped our microbiome.”

An even bigger surprise came when the team was able to successfully grow four living groups of yeast fungi pulled from Ötzi’s body—one of which came from deep inside his stomach.

“These cold-loving yeasts appear to have survived for thousands of years and are still biologically active today,” Maixner said

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TOPICS: Health/Medicine
KEYWORDS: ancientautopsies; copperage; godsgravesglyphs; microbes; oetzi; otzi; tzi

[BenLurkin]

Chalcolithic fungus ping

[Opinionated Blowhard]

An even bigger surprise came when the team was able to successfully grow four living groups of yeast fungi pulled from Ötzi’s body

Isn't this the way several sci fi horror movies started?

[Sacajaweau]

Just asking for trouble...

[SunkenCiv]

"The were microbes, but they're your crobes now." -- Otzi

[SunkenCiv]

This is probably the yeast of our worries.

[Antihero101607]

“This is probably the yeast of our worries”

Well played.

[Duke C.]

I wonder if he has any viable DNA. Can he be cloned?

[Deaf Smith]

“naturally frozen in a mountain glacier”

Is that the same as naturally drowned in ocean?

Same as naturally burned and buried in a pyroclastic flow?

How does one know that the glacier was not a train station?

It did 5K years to find the murder victim.

[VTenigma]

I saw a movie about this once. Put him back.

[bakeneko]

This is not surprising considering that about half of a person’s bodyweight is “not-the-person”, but microfauna microorganisms and other passengers.

[Magnum44]

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Otzi was relatively unknown until a known hoax began about him. A homosexual magazine published, as a gag, that frozen semen had been found in his rectum. The story was picked up by news media across Europe.

It didn’t matter that the magazine later retracted the hoax.

But on the plus side, it has resulted in Otzi getting a LOT more legitimate scientific research than he likely would have otherwise.

[roving]

I was hoping they would say what his last meal was.

[mewzilla]

Matango, from 1963, directed by Ishirō Honda.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“he was killed via an arrow to his back”

Ferals everywhere throughout history.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Half the weight? Hardly.

The human microbiome (bacteria, archaea, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms living in and on the body) totals roughly 0.2 kg in a reference 70 kg adult — so about 1/350th, or roughly 0.3% of body weight:

• A widely cited 2016 study by Sender et al. revised earlier (and often-repeated) estimates dramatically downward. The gut bacterial count is now estimated at ~3.8 × 10¹³ cells, roughly equal to the number of human cells — not "10x more" as was commonly claimed.
• The 0.2 kg figure is for bacteria alone, which dominate by mass. Fungi, archaea, and viruses add negligible additional weight.
• Most of that mass lives in the colon. The skin, mouth, and other sites contribute relatively little to total mass.
• As a fraction of lean body mass (excluding fat), the percentage is slightly higher but still well under 1%.

But notice that the number of gut bacteria cells equals the number of human cells (there's your 50% number). So why don't the bacteria weigh 50% of the total body weight?

Because a human cell is vastly larger than a bacterium. The average human cell is roughly 10–100 micrometers in diameter, while a typical gut bacterium (E. coli, for example) is about 1–2 micrometers long and much narrower. Volume scales with the cube of linear dimensions, so even a modest size difference translates to an enormous volume difference.

A typical human cell has a volume of roughly 1,000–4,000 cubic micrometers (varying enormously by cell type — a red blood cell is small, a muscle fiber is huge). A typical bacterium has a volume closer to 1 cubic micrometer. So a single human cell can be 1,000 to 4,000 times larger by volume than a single bacterium.

Since mass tracks volume fairly closely (both are mostly water), equal numbers of cells can have wildly unequal mass if the individual cells differ in size by three orders of magnitude. There's also a compositional factor: bacteria are mostly water and have very little structural mass per unit volume compared to eukaryotic cells, which contain a nucleus, mitochondria, cytoskeleton, and other dense structures.

So the math works out roughly like this:

• ~37 trillion human cells × ~1,000–4,000 µm³ each = enormous total volume

• ~38 trillion bacterial cells × ~1 µm³ each = about 1/1,000th the volume

Which maps cleanly onto the ~0.2 kg bacterial mass versus ~40–50 kg of cellular human tissue. Same count, completely different scale.

And now you know the rest of the story.

[Adder]

He might have been killed because he was a dick..

All of his goods still about him? Not robbery, then.

[JimRed]

Otzi’s corpse was likely contaminated with lots of stuff before it was properly stored.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yeah, he dissed Ög one too many times and that was the end of Ötzi. Human nature never changes.