Report of the twenty-first GAbridge project journal club, May 29th, 2026

The twenty-first GAbridge project journal club meeting took place on Friday, May 29th, 2026. Senior assistant Goran Tomac presented the paper "Emergence and evolution of Neolithic cattle breeding in Southeastern Europe: new zooarchaeological and stable isotopic data from Džuljunica-Smărdeš, in Northeastern Bulgaria (ca. 6200 – 5500 cal. BC)" (Kamjan et al., 2021). The work is significant to our group because of the way it empirically proves the introgression of aurochs into domesticated cattle after domestication - something we ourselves analyze using zooarchaeological methods based on data from osteological data, as well as genomic data from ancient DNA. The paper also shows data and hypotheses about the diet of the inhabitants of the analyzed Neolithic Bulgarian site, as well as about the breeding of domestic cattle at this site in the Neolithic era using analysis of radioactive isotopes.