In the terminal Pleistocene, all that shelf was land — coastal lowland with rivers, wetlands, beaches, and the kind of ecologically rich transitional zone between land and sea that human populations around the world have historically preferred.

The people who may have traveled south along this coast, following marine resources, would have lived at and near the shoreline.

Their camps, their middens, their shelters — if any existed — would have been built on ground that is now 80 to 85 meters underwater, far offshore.

Without extensive underwater archaeological investigation, these sites are not accessible.

This has a specific implication for how evidence of coastal migration is assessed: the absence of sites from the terminal Pleistocene coast does not mean people were not there.

It means their sites are submerged.