Getting junk data when trying to retrieve elements from a PROGMEM array on Arduino - arduino

Question

My code looks something like this:
#define SIZE_OF_ARRAY 1000
const long myArray[SIZE_OF_ARRAY] PROGMEM = {
1610514120L,
1613070480L,
1615630980L,
1618194720L,
1620759660L,
1623322440L,
1625879820L,
1628430600L,
1630975920L,
1633518300L,
1636060500L,
1638603840L,
1641148500L,
1643694540L,
... // All the way to 1000 elements
}
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
for( int i = 0; i < SIZE_OF_ARRAY; i++){
long currentNumber = myArray[i];
// These also do not work:
//long currentNumber = pgm_read_word_near(myArray + i);
//long currentNumber = pgm_read_dword_near(myArray + i);
Serial.println(currentNumber);
}
}
But when I run this code, I get completely random junk data:
0
65536
0
-1195853640
8843185
-566231498
-310626819
-854754529
263210495
-325068311
-159567983
-1770239
-29784074
1054840810
-293611553
-436273185
-566231498
-310626819
-854754529
263210495
... all the way up to 1000
How can I access that array to get the data I put in it? I am not very familiar with C and the difference between variables and pointers, but it works without the PROGMEM flag so I assumed it would work with it as well.

Answer 1

Looks like the answer was to use:
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
for( int i = 0; i < SIZE_OF_ARRAY; i++){
unsigned long currentNumber = pgm_read_dword_near(myArray + i);
Serial.println(currentNumber);
}
}
And to redefine the long array as:
const unsigned long myArray[SIZE_OF_ARRAY] PROGMEM = {
1610514120UL,
1613070480UL,
1615630980UL,
1618194720UL,
1620759660UL,
...
}
Because I was also running into long overflow errors