The Post-Ice-Age Transformation: Ecology in Motion

The specific ecological context in which Shuká Káa lived — the early Holocene coast of the Alexander Archipelago — was not simply a younger version of the present-day coast.

It was a landscape in active transformation, as the ecological communities of the post-glacial world were still establishing their long-term configurations.

The deglaciation of the Alexander Archipelago — the retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet from the islands and coastal mountains — had been underway for several thousand years by the time Shuká Káa was alive.

The ice that had covered the landscape was gone from the lower elevations, and the process of ecological succession on newly exposed land had been proceeding for millennia.