At https://phys.org/news/2026-06-years-el-mirn-cave-uncover.html … archaeologists have been sifting through thick sediment in El Miron cave over the last 30 years. It is in Cantabria, in Spain. The researchers have published an article ‘A Window into 40,000 years of the prehistory of Iberia: the long excavation of El Miron cave‘ – see https://doi.org/10.1086/739377 …
El Miron is a deep limestone cave above a river valley in one direction, and the Bay of Biscay on the other. It has been occupied on and off over a long period of time. There are many strata – hence the time consuming nature of the excavation. Over 102 C14 dates have been obtained, and various other techniques, such as accelerator mass spectrometry, have been used. Dating the various layers of occupation required serious methodology. Also, DNA has been analysed, on human and animal bones, as well as in the sediments themselves. Teeth have been utilised to find out what they were eating, and so on. The Solutrean and Magdalenian periods are especially productive as far as finds are concerned. These are listed at the link. It seems they hunted red deer, ibex, horse and roe deer. They caught salmon and trout.
DNA analysis of a Magdalenian skeleton has been found to be genetically close to other hunter gatherer communities, even those in northern Europe. Magdalenian people expanded northwards after the ice receded. The Magdalenian skeleton had bacteria in the oral microbiome, preserved for 19,000 years. It had been inherited from Neanderthals – who went extinct 20,000 years earlier. They were probably passed down orally from mother to offspring.