Human beings do not survive Arctic conditions as isolated individuals.

They survive in groups, and the size and organization of those groups matter enormously for the effectiveness of food acquisition, the distribution of risk, the care of vulnerable individuals (children, elderly, injured), and the maintenance of the specialized knowledge that arctic survival requires.

The people of eastern Beringia, if the Bluefish Caves evidence reflects their presence, were living in social groups — the specific size and organization of those groups cannot be recovered from the archaeological evidence, but the evidence of systematic carcass processing implies the kind of economic behavior that makes more sense in a group context than as the activity of a single isolated individual.

The Bluefish Caves Subsistence Evidence