The Snake River that flows through the region where the Buhl burial was found is, today, one of the most heavily managed rivers in the American West — dammed, diverted, and controlled in ways that have fundamentally transformed the ecological character of the system.

In the terminal Pleistocene, the Snake River was very different.

The dams that now impound the river’s flow were centuries in the future.

The irrigation infrastructure that draws water from the river to the agricultural fields of the Snake River Plain did not exist.

The river ran freely through the basalt canyon it had been cutting for millions of years, fed by snowmelt from the mountains and by the residual meltwater of the retreating glaciers to the north and east.

The salmon that ran up the Snake River system were, in this earlier period, among the most significant food resources available to people living along the river.