Investigations of how past human societies managed during times of major climate change can inform our understanding of potential human responses to ongoing environmental change. In this study, we evaluate the impact of environmental variation on human communities over the last four millennia in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of the Andes, known as Lake Wiñaymarka. Refined paleoenvironmental reconstructions from new diatom-based reconstructions of lake level together with archaeological evidence of animal and plant resource use from sites on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia, reveal frequent climate and lake-level changes within major cultural phases. We posit that climate fluctuations alone do not explain major past social and political transformations but instead that a highly dynamic environment contributed to the development of flexible and diverse subsistence practices by the communities in the Titicaca Basin.

对过去人类社会在重大气候变化时期如何进行管理的调查可以帮助我们了解人类对正在进行的环境变化的潜在对策。在这项研究中，我们评估了安第斯山脉南部喀喀湖盆地（称为Wiñaymarka湖）的喀喀湖南部地区近四千年来环境变化对人类社区的影响。基于新的基于硅藻的湖面重建的精细古环境重建以及玻利维亚塔拉科半岛遗址的动植物资源利用的考古学证据表明，主要文化阶段的气候和湖面变化频繁。