Descendants.

The salmon traveled the farthest. Its oldest known ancestor in the genus Salmonidae swam through the waters of the Eocene, back when Australia was still a part of Antarctica, North America was still a part of Europe, and India was just beginning its long and persistent attempt to hump its way over China, smashing itself into the Himalayan mountains in the process.

When the continents began to move, they took the salmon with them. When humans showed up, they noticed the salmon, many of which had developed an eccentric habit of  migrating from freshwater out to the ocean and then back again. Salmon navigate their way back to where they were hatched by the smell of their past. Olfactory memory draws them to their place of origin, until they reproduce, at which point their bodies flood with massive doses of corticosteroids, causing them to disintegrate in the water. This drive to migrate set humans in motion as well. The Celio Falls in Wyoming was, archaeologists say, the Wall Street of the West. For 15,000 years, tribes from all across North America converged there during the spawning season, building platforms to spear and net the 20 million salmon that raced up the Columbia river.

Their smoked and dried carcasses became both food and currency. Preserving the salmon by soaking it in saltwater brine came from the Scandanavians but — inexplicably — caught on with Jewish immigrants from Europe before completely failing to catch on with their descendents. Today, what we call “lox” is almost always smoked — more like what happened at Celio Falls than in Norway. It is sliced about 5 mm thick from the belly of the salmon.

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