Archeology

British researchers think they have solved the decades-old mystery of why ancient Britons transported massive rocks 250 miles from Wales to Salisbury Plain to construct the massive but enigmatic Stonehenge monument: They believed the stones possessed healing powers.

Egypt's antiquities council says archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old red granite head believed to portray the 19th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses II. The Supreme Council of Antiquities says the discovery was made recently at Tell Basta, about 50 miles northeast of Cairo. The council's statement this week says the 30-inch-high head belonged to a colossal statue of Ramses II that once stood in the area. The site at Tell Basta was dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet and was an important center of the Old Kingdom until the end of the Roman Period.

Sometimes serendipity makes history. In this case, it may have uncovered history. This year, Israeli writer Yaron Svoray came to Germany to research the underground operation that whisked Nazi officials to South America to escape justice after World War II. Svoray was chatting with a local about his project when the man mentioned that a nearby plot of land had served as a dump during the Third Reich.

Canadian researchers say they've narrowed down the likely owner of a dinosaur nest, abandoned on a river's edge 77 million years ago, to two suspects. They say that the discovery offers a unique look at dinosaur reproduction and the evolution of birds. The two small, carnivorous suspects are a caenagnathid, which looks somewhat like an ostrich, or a small raptor called a dromaeosaurid. Both are small by dinosaur standards, and related to modern birds. The nest probably held as many as a dozen eggs, of which fossilized fragments remain.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered the tombs of two court officials, in charge of music and pyramid building, in a 4,000-year-old cemetery that was built during the reign of Pharaoh Unas. The tombs were found buried in the sands south of Cairo and could shed light on the fifth and the sixth dynasties of the Old Kingdom, said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief. One of the tombs belonged to Iya Maat, the supervisor of pyramid building under the reign of Unas. He organized the acquisition of granite and limestone from Aswan and other materials from the Western Desert.

Carved tools and ornaments from Russia paint a rare picture of the time about 45,000 years ago when modern humans migrated out of Africa to colonize Europe, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. "The big surprise here is the very early presence of modern humans in one of the coldest, driest places in Europe," said lead author John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Russia "is one of the last places we would have expected people from Africa to occupy first."

On the heavily forested eastern slopes of the Andes, Peruvian farmers have discovered a massive ruin whose unusual size and shape promise to shed new light on the relationship between the Chachapoyas and the Inca warriors who destroyed their civilization.

ITALIAN police have unearthed the hidden cache of a group of grave robbers, recovering ancient Roman marble reliefs depicting stunningly lifelike gladiators locked in mortal combat, officials said Wednesday. The 12 panels were buried in the garden of a home near Fiano Romano, 25 miles north of Rome. Officials hailed it as a major archeological find and a blow to the illegal antiquities market. Archeologists said the work offers a glimpse into early gladiator fights.

A 2,500-year-old city influenced by the Olmecs -- often referred to as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica -- has been discovered in Mexico, hundreds of miles away from the Olmecs' Gulf Coast territory, archeologists said Wednesday. Two statues and architectural details at the site, known as Zazacatla, indicate that the inhabitants adopted Olmec styles when they changed from a simple, egalitarian society to a more complex, hierarchical one.

Three Australian caves have yielded a treasure trove of fossils of ancient kangaroos, marsupial lions and giant lizards that roamed the outback for hundreds of thousands of years. These so-called megafauna went extinct about 45,000 years ago, shortly after humans arrived on the continent. Researchers, writing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, suggest that the extinction was the result of the human use of fire for hunting -- and not climate change, as some scientists have suggested.