They were executing a practiced, culturally transmitted knowledge of carcass processing that had been developed and refined over a long period of experience.

The specific animals represented in the Bluefish Caves modification record — horse and caribou — are both large-bodied species that represent major food resources but also major challenges for a processing group.

A horse or caribou carcass weighs hundreds of kilograms.

No individual person, and no small group without appropriate tools and knowledge, can efficiently process an animal of that size.

The evidence of systematic carcass processing at Bluefish Caves implies a social and technological context — a group with the right tools and the right knowledge — that is the context of a functioning hunter-gatherer community, not of isolated individuals wandering through a landscape they did not know.

The Mammoth in the Room: Why the Site’s Megafauna Matters