High-resolution records of Mediterranean and North Atlantic deep-sea sediments indicate that rapid changes in hydrology and climate occurred during marine oxygen isotope stage 100 (MIS100) (at ~2.52 Ma), which exhibits characteristics similar to late Pleistocene Dansgaard-Oeschger, Bond cycles and Heinrich events. As in the late Pleistocene, North Atlantic oceanographic and atmospheric changes were probably transmitted into the Mediterranean by some combination of surface water inflow and Atlantic-Mediterranean atmospheric pressure gradients. Our data suggest that the mechanism(s) responsible for sub-Milankovitch and millennial-scale climate oscillations were the same over at least the past 2.6 Ma, notwithstanding the transition from the 41-kyr-dominated glacial cycles of the late Pliocene to the 100-kyr cycles of the late Pleistocene.