Shuká Káa challenges this model.

A man living on an island 10,300 years ago, eating a diet dominated by marine protein, was clearly adapted to coastal life in a comprehensive way.

He was not a terrestrial hunter who occasionally ate fish; he was a maritime person whose subsistence was fundamentally organized around the sea.

This level of marine adaptation at such an early date — among the oldest known individuals from the Northwest Coast — implies that maritime technology and knowledge had already been well-developed by the time Shuká Káa was alive.

This implication connects directly to one of the most important debates in the study of the first Americans: the question of whether people entered the Americas from Beringia through the continental interior (the traditional “inland route” model, associated with the Clovis culture) or whether some early Americans followed the Pacific coast southward from Beringia (the coastal route model).