i get that it's kinda weird, but ya'll know they don't do this sorta shit for no reason, right? it's isn't just some researcher going "oh i wonder if i can make bread from this dead italian guy" just for fun, this is experimental archeology and anthropology. yeast that's been on otzi the iceman (he's the mummy in question!) for over 5k years is going to be very similar to other yeasts from around the time he was alive, so by making things like bread with the yeast sampled from him we can learn what those things would've been like in that region when he was alive! not to mention making bread is just a good way to test the properties of a yeast strain, stuff like how quickly it reproduces or produces CO2, and from what i read otzi's yeast might prove to be incredibly useful in medicine due to its ability to break down toxic phenols!
and it's not like someone just decided on a whim to dig some goo out of otzi's guts n throw it into a sourdough starter, the study of his gut microbiome grants incredible insight into the diet of people and state of the ecology in his time and locale, and its been under study for a while now. also, the yeast wouldn't have been directly from otzi's body, that's unsanitary at best and illegal n likely to get your funding cut at worst, they propagated a sample of the yeast from his skin on something like an agar plate so they could make the starter using a clean sample of the yeast without any of his skin cells in it. it'd be a lot like if i propagated yeast from my own skin for a sourdough starter; sure it's weird and some people would understandably find the idea of making bread from it gross, but calling that cannibalism is either misinformed or just dishonest.
archeology undeniably has roots in weird racist shit, and people treating the long-dead like objects to do anything they want with, including grinding them into a powder to consume because you've misunderstood some ancient medical text. this isn't an example of that. you're understandably grossed out by reductive headlines n shock reporting, and just not knowing lab procedure. ethics and regulations in archeology have come a long way from what used to be basically just grave robbing with a written record of what you stole, otzi the iceman is treated like the holy grail. if they can't study something about him without badly damaging him, they won't do it until they figure out a better way! he probably has as much care put into keeping him safe as the next most popular italian mummy, by which i mean the pope.
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