If people were living on islands in the Alexander Archipelago 10,300 years ago, with demonstrated maritime capability, then the populations from which they descended — the people who first arrived on the coast at some point in the early Holocene or possibly the late Pleistocene — must also have had maritime capability sufficient to move along the coast and to settle island environments.

The founding coastal people of the Northwest Coast were not terrestrial hunters gradually discovering the coast — they were maritime people from the beginning of their coastal presence.

The Legacy of On Your Knees Cave Research

The research program that grew from the discovery of Shuká Káa’s remains in On Your Knees Cave has contributed to multiple fields and has had effects that extend well beyond the specific findings about one ancient individual.

In North American archaeology, the discovery raised the profile of the Alexander Archipelago as a region of major significance for understanding the early human history of the continent.