Holocene Impact Working Group

Ad hoc group called the Holocene Impact Working Group (HIWG) is a consortium of researchers and research groups from several countries that was created in early 2005 as follow-up the ICSU-sponsored Workshop on Comets/Asteroid Hazard held in the Canary Islands in December of 2004. The group includes the researchers and research teams from different field of geoscience who believe that Holocene impacts were more frequent in the recent past than the accepted view and that these impacts have played a significant role in past environmental change and biological and cultural/cognitive evolution. Evidence already collected by the group suggests that the large impacts on the Earth by comets and asteroids have taken place more recently and with greater frequency that presently argued by most NEO planetary scientists. The hypothesized oceanic/glacial impacts that are currently under study include the large comet impact over the Canadian ice shield some 13,000 years ago that triggered the beginning of the Younger Dryas climatic ordeal at 12,900 BP, the Burckle-Madagascar impact at round 4800-5000 BP, that may be associated with the Great (Noah's) Flood and the boundary change from middle to late Holocene around 4800 BP, the Gulf of Carpentaria impacts that are associated with "years without summers" climatic event 535-545 AD, and Mahuika crater just south of New Zealand that may be related to the beginning of the Little Ice Age at around 1450 AD. The focus of the current group activity is further search for physical, anthropological and archeological evidence in support of these and other impact events.