“Thousands of monumental structures built from walls of rock in Saudi Arabia are older than Egypt’s pyramids and the ancient stone circles of Britain, researchers say – making them perhaps the earliest ritual landscape ever identified.”

–Tom Metcalfe, journalist, NBC. A study published Thursday in the journal Antiquity shows that the mysterious structures dotted around the desert in northwestern Saudi Arabia – called “mustatils” from the Arabic word for “rectangle” – are about 7,000 years old. That’s much older than expected, and about 2,000 years older than either Stonehenge in England or the oldest Egyptian pyramid. [NBCNews]