But the fundamental character of the ecosystem — its maritime climate, its productive salmon runs, its extraordinary marine richness — has been a constant feature of the landscape since the ice retreated.

This ecological continuity is one of the factors that makes the cultural and genetic continuity of the Northwest Coast peoples possible to understand.

People adapt to specific environments, developing the specific knowledge and technology needed to exploit the resources of those environments effectively.

If the environment remains fundamentally consistent across many generations, the adaptive strategies developed for it remain useful and can be transmitted and elaborated over long periods without the disruption that radical environmental change would require.

The Northwest Coast peoples developed, over approximately 10,000 years, the most sophisticated maritime culture in the temperate zone of the Americas — a culture centered on the harvesting and processing of salmon, sea mammals, and other marine resources, organized through complex social structures adapted to a maritime resource economy, and expressed in artistic and ceremonial traditions of extraordinary richness.