Iraq’s Anticorruption Commission announced that it has caught a gang of antiquities thieves in a sting operation.

Eight-thousand-year-old rock art discovered in a cave in 2002 may offer insight into the rise of Egyptian civilization. “It seems that the paintings of the Cave of the Beasts pre-date the introduction of domesticated animals. That means they predate 6000 B.C.,” said Rudolph Kuper of the Heinrich Barth Institute.  

Divers have returned to the ruins of Cleopatra’s palace in the waters off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. The so-called Royal Quarters, which included ports, temples, palaces, and military outposts, fell into the sea during earthquakes in the fourth and eighth centuries. “It’s as it was when it sank,” said Ashraf Abdel-Raouf of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.  

Here’s a photograph of the altar uncovered at a disputed hospital construction site in Ashkelon. “The discovery further corroborates the assertion that we are dealing with a pagan cemetery,” said Yigal Israel of the Israel Antiquities Authority.  

Tourists will soon be able to visit the underground areas of Rome’s Colosseum.  

Mesoamerican peoples varied their recipe of latex from rubber trees and the juice from morning-glory vines to produce rubber with different qualities for a variety of uses, such as shoes, balls, rubber bands, and adhesives, according to researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

Here’s more information from Cyprus on the intact tomb excavated last week and the four painted sarcophagi found within it. “We think this is part of a larger cemetery or burial ground. This is a new area of discovery for us,” said Maria Hadjicosti of the Antiquities Department.  

And, in case you missed it when it was first announced, The Independent has an article on Easter Island’s network of roads and moai. “Ever since Heyerdhal, it has been assumed that the roads were used for transportation and little else. But what we know now is that the roads very much had a ceremonial function and the quarry was where the islanders would go because it was a sacred center,” said Sue Hamilton of University College London.  

Bannerman’s Castle was built on an island in the Hudson River in the early years of the twentieth century to store the munitions that Francis Bannerman VI sold in his war relic store in Manhattan. Modeled after a Scottish castle, the burned-out shell is now in danger of collapsing while preservationists try to raise the money to save it. “I just get antsy because it can come down at any time,” said Neil Caplan, head of the Bannerman Castle Trust.  

How much is Stonehenge worth?  

Chimp populations are declining due to deforestation and the bush meat trade, just as human scientists are learning about their use of tools in the past and present. “Whole groups of chimpanzees have already been exterminated, and with them, their technological heritage,” wrote William McGrew of the University of Cambridge in Science.

A luxurious Etruscan home has been discovered in central Italy. “Here today we are rewriting history. It is a unique case in Italy because with what we have found we will be able to completely reconstruct the entire house,” said Simona Rafanelli, of the Isidoro Falchi Archaeological Museum.

Here’s a fascinating slideshow about the “Ship of the Thousand Ingots,” narrated by Donatella Salvi, director of the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, Italy. The ship sank under mysterious circumstances 2,000 years ago off the coast of Sardinia, carrying a load of Roman lead.  The lead has almost completely lost its natural radioactivity, and some of it will be used by physicists conducting particle experiments at an underground laboratory.  

After decades of research, botanists, geneticists, and archaeologists say they have confirmed that the wild ancestor of the domestic corn plant is a Mexican grass called teosinte, long thought to be a closer relative of rice than of maize. They estimate that domestication occurred about 9,000 years ago.  

More than 50,000 pieces of colonoware, a handmade pottery crafted by slaves, has been unearthed at a site on the coast of South Carolina that was home to 19 slave cabins for 150 years.  

The skeletal remains of prehistoric Puebloan people will be moved to make way for a dam and reservoir in Kanab, Utah. In all, 15 sites will be engulfed by the project, including prehistoric houses and storage pits, middens, and settlements from the pioneer period.