The burial mound in Montana where the skeleton was found. Texas A&M University The peopling of the Americas via the Bering Sea land bridge is one of the more confusing events in recent history. Some of the earliest signs of human occupancy are actually in Chile. After that, the first distinct toolmaking culture, the Clovis people, appeared in the interior of North America, and rapidly swept across the continent. There are also indications that a separate migration occurred down the Pacific coast, possibly associated with people who had distinctive skeletal features, while the Inuit seem to be relatively recent arrivals. The sudden appearance of the Clovis toolset has caused some people to suggest that the Clovis were a distinct migration by a passage between ice sheets directly into North America’s interior. Others have even suggested that they arrived from Europe, brought by people who crossed the ice through Greenland (an idea that’s favored by a certain Bigfoot researcher ). Now, researchers have completed the genome of an individual who was buried with Clovis tools in Montana 12,500 years ago. The results suggest that the migration into North America was more unified than some thought. Although Clovis tools are relatively common at many North American sites, they’re generally not associated with skeletal remains. And there have been no distinctive skeletal features that label remains as belonging to a distinctive Clovis ethnic group. All of which makes Montana’s Anzick site exceptional: it contains remains that were placed with Clovis tools, unambiguously tagging the skeleton as belonging to this group. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Skeleton from one of the earliest Americans yields its genome
Amazon has just reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2013 . According to The Verge , Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak mentioned that the company is considering a price increase for its Amazon Prime customers in the US. The decision hasn’t been made, but high shipping costs could prompt a price increase of between $20 and $40 a year for the service. Prime began life as a service that offered free two-day shipping on many items for a flat, $79-a-year fee. As Amazon has branched out into tablets and streaming media, perks like the Instant Video service and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library have been added to sweeten the deal. The potential price increase would be the first since Prime was introduced in the US in 2005. Amazon reported income of $239 million on sales of $25.59 billion for the fourth quarter of 2013, lower than analysts had expected. The company’s guidance for the first quarter of 2014 projects sales between $18.2 and $19.9 billion and expects income to be somewhere between a profit of $200 million and a loss of $200 million. Read on Ars Technica | Comments 
