The significance of what the evidence does establish is sufficient to make Bluefish Caves one of the most important archaeological sites in North America.

The evidence places people in the right place — eastern Beringia, at the edge of the Americas — at the right time — during the Last Glacial Maximum, when the Beringian standstill hypothesis proposes that the ancestral Native American population was isolated before the dispersal.

It supports, without proving, the broader model of an extended Beringian occupation before the dispersal into the Americas.

The cut marks on a horse’s jaw, found in a cold Yukon cave, are the material trace of a moment that stands near the beginning of a very long story — the story of how human beings came to inhabit both of the Americas, every environment from arctic tundra to tropical rainforest to high-altitude plateau, developing over thousands of years the diverse cultures, languages, and technologies of the peoples who first made the Western Hemisphere their home.