Upper Palaeolithic archaeological sites in the Basque Country have been excavated for over a century. They have yielded a rich palaeoenvironmental record with zoological and botanical remains that have been obtained in stratigraphic series dated precisely by radiocarbon. This information reveals cyclical environmental changes from climates similar to today to drier and extremely cold conditions, when species in current boreal biomes and others now extinct but with similar ecological preferences were present in the region. Moreover, the archaeological sites have provided high-resolution information about the resilience mechanisms of the communities of our own human species. This information allows us to increase the corpus of palaeoclimate data regarding the Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 2 and MIS 3 for a critical region within the human population of Eurasia. The aim of this paper is to show how an extraordinary capacity for adaptation to drastic climate changes Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer societies displayed, even though their subsistence depended on biotic resources that alter rapidly.

巴斯克地区旧石器时代晚期的考古遗址已经被挖掘了一个多世纪。他们产生了丰富的古环境记录，包括通过放射性碳精确测定年代的地层系列中的动物和植物遗骸。这些信息揭示了周期性的环境变化，从类似于今天的气候到更加干燥和极冷的条件，当时该地区存在着当前北方生物群落和其他物种现已灭绝但具有相似生态偏好的物种。此外，考古遗址还提供了有关我们人类群体的恢复机制的高分辨率信息。这些信息使我们能够增加欧亚大陆人口关键区域的海洋同位素阶段 (MIS) 2 和 MIS 3 的古气候数据集。本文的目的是展示旧石器时代晚期的狩猎采集社会如何表现出适应剧烈气候变化的非凡能力，尽管他们的生存依赖于快速变化的生物资源。