Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in science this week.
Before Stonehenge

An aerial view of the site where two massive wooden palisades once stood of the landscape. Arcaheological excavations have revealed that around 3300 B.C., anicent people built huge wooden enclosures, then burnt them down to the ground, near what is now Avebury, England.
Credit: Historic England
A massive, wooden, eyeglass-shaped monument in Avebury, England, that was set alight in ancient ceremonies may be 800 years older than it was thought to be, new research suggests.
Workers in ancient times likely constructed the site first by digging large ditches and then placing oak posts into sockets in the earth, Whittle told Live Science. Then, they used the dug-out earth to backfill and cover the base of the posts and create a huge palisade. [Read more about the strange site.]
Sequencing a Mummy

Scientists sequenced DNA from mummies from the settlement of Abusir el-Meleq, south of Cairo, and were buried between 1380 B.C. and A.D. 425.
Credit: bpk/Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB/Sandra Steiss
For the first time, researchers have successfully sequenced the DNA from Egyptian mummies. The findings reveal that these ancient people were more genetically similar to populations living in the eastern Mediterranean — a region that today includes Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq — than people living in modern-day Egypt.
Worldwide, the remains of thousands of mummies from ancient Egypt have been excavated, but obtaining intact, undamaged DNA from the bodies has proved challenging. [Read more about the mummy DNA.]
Measuring a Star's Mass
This image shows an Einstein ring (middle right), which occurs when a massive object acts like a lens for light coming toward the observer from a background object. This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing, and recently used for the first time to measure the mass of an individual star.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
The mass of Stein 2051 B, a white dwarf star located about 18 light-years from Earth, has been a subject of some controversy for over a century. Now, a group of astronomers has finally made a precise measurement of the star's mass and settled a 100-year-old debate, using a cosmic phenomenon first predicted by Albert Einstein.
Einstein's theory of general relativity hypothesized that space is flexible rather than fixed, and that massive objects (like stars) create curves in space, sort of like a bowling ball creating a curve on the surface of a mattress. The degree to which an object warps space-time depends on how massive that object is (similarly, a heavier bowling ball puts a deeper imprint on a mattress). [Read more about the experiment in relativity.]
'Thinking' Flora
Plant seeds have miniature "brains" that help them decide when to germinate. Two different regions in the root tip of the embryo release opposing hormones. When the "go" hormone levels outcompete the "stop" hormone levels, the seed germinates.
Credit: George Bassel and Matthew Jackson
Plant seeds may use miniature "brains" to help them decide whether to sprout or stay dormant, new research suggests.
The idea that plants can feel, hear or see is not new; researchers have shown that seedlings arc toward sounds of certain frequencies or hasten their growth when a competing species is planted nearby. And plants can communicate with each other when danger is nearby, according to a 2007 study in the journal Oecologia. [Read more about the plant's brain.]
Older Than We Know
The oldest bones of Homo sapiens were found at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud. Here, a view of the site showing the remaining deposits and people excavating them (center). Some 300,000 years ago, this site, which would have been a cave, was occupied by early hominins.
Credit: Shannon McPherron/MPI EVA Leipzig
The oldest known bones of our species, dating back around 300,000 years, have been discovered in a cave in Morocco.
Archaeologists uncovered the human fossils, including a partial skull and a lower jaw, during excavations at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco that began in 2004. But the site has a much earlier excavation history: Scientists first found some of the remains of these same individuals, along with stone tools, in the 1960s during mining operations. [Read more about the oldest fossils.]
Hunting Snakes
Researchers found that cave-dwelling Cuban boas will oordinate their hunts to increase their chances of catching prey.
Credit: Vladimir Dinets/University of Tennessee
When cave-dwelling Cuban boas fancy a meal, they band together to hunt for bats by concealing themselves along the cave entrance and forming a wall of deadly snakes before launching their coordinated strikes, according to a new study on the rare occurrence of snakes hunting in packs.
And coordination among snakes to catch prey has never been proved, said study author Vladimir Dinets, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, who specializes in animal behavior. [Read more about the snake packs.]
Lost Mind of St. John Bosco
Parts of the brain of St. John Bosco are kept in glass behind the altar at the basilica of Castelnuovo, near Turin, Italy.
Credit: Andrea Cherchi
When pilgrims lined up in a church in northern Italy to pray before the relic of St. John Bosco, the revered founder of the Salesian religious order, on Saturday (June 3), they encountered a sign with an unexpected message: "Closed. Under construction."
As pressure mounted over the puzzling sign, the church revealed a shocking truth: Someone had stolen preserved brain bits of a saint. [Read more about the missing aircraft.]
Herbs and Mental Risks

A man in Italy who had developed psychosis — meaning he lost touch with reality — did so after consuming an herbal tea made with St. John's wort, according to a recent report of this case.
The case in Italy involved a 25-year-old man who was admitted to the hospital after two of his friends, who accompanied him to the hospital, told the doctors that he had been acting strangely in the past few days. The man behaved as if he were under the influence of an illegal drug, the friends said. [Read more about the unusual case.]
Instinct vs. Problem Solving
For more than a millennium, scholars have noticed a curious correlation: Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people.
But why does this association exist? Dutton set out to find answer, thinking that perhaps it was because nonreligious people were more rational than their religious brethren, and thus better able to reason that there was no God, he wrote. [Read more about differences.]
Novel Approach to Addiction

As heroin-related deaths soar in the United States, a group of researchers said they may be one step closer to developing a vaccine that could block the drug's addictive high.
Heroin produces a high by activating the opioid receptors in the nervous system, triggering feelings of euphoria. The danger is that the drug can also cause the body's systems to become too relaxed, causing a slowdown in breathing. A common cause of death among people who overdose on heroin is respiratory arrest. That is, the person stops breathing and dies. [Read more about the vaccine.]
Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+.