The Holocene was marked by several regional and hemispheric abrupt climate change events that provoked profound societal adaptations. This session would focus on the physical causes of Holocene abrupt climate changes and their societal impacts. The physical causes questions to be analysed include quantification and modelling of climate proxies' data and the measurement of abruptness, magnitude, structure, and duration of abrupt changes in temperature and precipitation. The social effects questions to be analysed include agricultural and subsistence alterations, political, economic and technological change, quantified regional settlement and demography, regional abandonment and habitat tracking, political and regional collapses, adaptive innovation and resilience, and pastoralist adaptations across environments. Analyses of the regional collapse and habitat tracking processes in Mesoamerica, Andes, Iberia, Greece, Egypt, Levant, Mesopotamia, Indus and East Asia are particularly welcomed.