The Chinook people have lived along the Pacific Coast for countless generations and say their ancestors were here at the end of the last ice age, when rising seas and a Columbia River swollen by melting mile-high glaciers transformed a very different landscape. In this place, wide coastal plains once extended 25 miles off the Pacific Coast when sea levels were 60 to 200 feet lower than today, and generations of people adapted and survived as the waters rose quickly, leaving many ancient settlements beneath the waves. Archaeological excavations have established that humans lived along the Columbia River 10,000 years ago or more, with 4,000-year-old sites near the ocean. By 1700, the Pacific Coast's human population is estimated to have numbered 180,000, with tens of thousands living along the Columbia, sustained each year by as many as 16 million spawning salmon. Chinook voices emphasize that their people have been here since the beginning and remained constant long before the first documented Euro-American and before Lewis and Clark.