The faunal assemblages from European cave sites — from sites like Vogelherd in Germany, Isturitz in France, and many others — document the large-animal hunting that characterized the economic life of Upper Paleolithic Europeans and that is broadly analogous to what the Bluefish Caves evidence implies for eastern Beringian humans.

The faunal evidence from Bluefish Caves is, in many respects, similar in character to the faunal evidence from European Upper Paleolithic cave sites: cut-marked bones of large herbivores, processed in ways consistent with systematic economic exploitation.

The specific animals are different — European sites document primarily reindeer, horses, and bovids, with mammoth also common — but the basic economic pattern is comparable.

This comparison is not incidental.