and believed to increase the fertility of women. When the aurochs was slaughtered, the os cordis was extracted from the heart; this bone contributed to the mystique and magical powers that were attributed to it. In eastern Europe, the aurochs has left traces in expressions like "behaving like an aurochs" for a drunken person behaving badly, and "a bloke like an aurochs" for big and strong people. Domestication The earliest known domestication of the aurochs dates to the Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent, where cattle hunted and kept by Neolithic farmers gradually decreased in size between 9800 and 7500 BC. Aurochs bones found at Mureybet and Göbekli Tepe are larger in size than cattle bones from later Neolithic settlements in northern Syria like Dja'de el-Mughara and Tell Halula. In Late Neolithic sites of northern Iraq and western Iran dating to the sixth millennium BC, cattle remains are also smaller but more frequent, indicating that domesticated cattle were imported during the Halaf culture from the central Fertile Crescent region. Results of genetic research indicate that the modern taurine cattle (Bos taurus) arose from 80 aurochs tamed in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria about 10,500 years ago. Taurine cattle spread into the Balkans and northern Italy along the Danube River and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Hybridisation between male aurochs and early domestic cattle occurred in central Europe between 9500 and 1000 BC. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA sequences of Italian aurochs specimens dated to 17–7,000 years ago and 51 modern cattle breeds revealed some degree of introgression of aurochs genes into south European cattle, indicating that female aurochs had contact with free-ranging domestic cattle. Cattle bones of various sizes found at a Chalcolithic settlement in the Kutná Hora District provide further evidence for hybridisation of aurochs and domestic cattle between 3000 and 2800 BC in the Bohemian region. Whole genome sequencing of a 6,750-year-old aurochs bone found in England was compared with genome sequence data of 81 cattle and single-nucleotide polymorphism data of 1,225 cattle. Results revealed that British and Irish cattle breeds share some genetic variants with the aurochs specimen; early herders in Britain might have been responsible for the local gene flow from aurochs into the ancestors of British and Irish cattle. The Murboden cattle breed also exhibits sporadic introgression of female European aurochs into domestic cattle in the Alps. Domestic cattle continued to diminish in both body