And what was written there turned out to be the beginning of a story that has not ended.

The Story That Science Is Still Telling

The Shuká Káa discovery, transformative as it was, did not mark the end of the scientific investigation of the early human history of the Northwest Coast.

It marked a beginning — or more precisely, a deepening.

The questions opened by the Shuká Káa analysis — about the specific population history of the founding coastal people, about the relationship between the founding population and the many cultural traditions that developed on the coast across 10,000 years, about the specific demographic events of that long history — require more evidence to address in detail.

Each additional ancient genome from the Northwest Coast adds a data point that constrains the possible population histories.