The coastal route model, which has gained significant support from both archaeological evidence and genetic research over the past several decades, requires that the people moving southward along the coast had the maritime capabilities needed to navigate and exploit a coastal environment.

Shuká Káa’s diet is consistent with — though not by itself proof of — the coastal route hypothesis.

A population with the maritime capabilities needed to live as Shuká Káa evidently lived would have been capable of moving along the coast, exploiting the same kinds of marine resources that supported him on Prince of Wales Island.

Whether his specific ancestors were among those who first moved along the coast into the Americas, or whether his community’s maritime adaptation developed independently in the archipelago after an initial interior arrival, is a question that requires more evidence than the single individual can provide.

What is clear is that by 10,300 years ago, at least some people on the Northwest Coast were living in a way that was comprehensively maritime — dependent on the sea, adapted to life on an island, equipped with whatever technology and knowledge made that life possible.