The Shuká Káa discovery contributed to this effort by establishing a specific ancient individual’s presence and ancestry in the archipelago at a specific early date — a data point that constrains and informs the models of how the coast was settled and how its founding populations were organized.

The Salmon and the Pacific

The Pacific salmon — the five species of Oncorhynchus that dominate the freshwater fisheries of the Northwest Coast — are the ecological keystone around which the human history of the coast has organized itself for 10,000 years.

The specific biology of the salmon, with its dramatic anadromous life history of ocean feeding and freshwater spawning, creates the conditions for the specific pattern of human settlement and subsistence that has characterized the Northwest Coast for the entire span of the documented human history of the region.

Salmon return to the freshwater streams of their birth in predictable seasonal pulses that vary by species and by location.