Primordial hadrosynthesis in the Little Bang

The present status of soft hadron production in high energy heavy-ion colli sions is summarized. In spite of strong evidence for extensive dynamical ev olution and collective expansion of the fireball before freeze-out I argue that its chemical composition is hardly changed by hadronic final state int eractions. The measured hadron yields thus reflect the primordial condition s at hadronization. The observed production pattern is consistent with stat istical hadronization at the Hagedorn temperature from a state of uncorrela ted, color deconfined quarks and antiquarks, but requires non-trivial chemi cal evolution of the fireball in a prehadronic (presumably QGP) stage befor e hadron formation.