Killing fields of ancient Syria revealed

Stone corrals trapped herds for mass slaughter

Texas barbecue has nothing on the ancient Near East.

A mass gazelle slaughter unearthed in northeastern Syria may give clues to the region’s “desert kites,” strange stone corrals that many researchers consider among humans’ first mass-scale snares. In a single massacre 5,500 years ago, hunters appear to have herded at least 93 gazelles into a kite and then killed the animals, an Israeli and U.S.