Extreme climatic/environmental events associated with sea level rise in the context of global warming are a prime concern in coastal management. Kuahuqiao, the type-site for the early Neolithic culture of the same name, is of critical importance to understanding the development of rice-based agriculture and settlements, as well as human-environment relations in east coastal China. Abandonment of Kuahuqiao at around 7,600 cal BP has been attributed to marine inundation, marking the onset of settlement hiatus that lasted until occupation, several hundred years later. New sedimentary dataset, combined with microfossil identification and AMS ¹⁴C dating, reveal that Kuahuqiao settlements were destroyed by catastrophic overbank flooding associated with tidal bores. Such extreme events manifest a non-linear response to the complexity of forces at the interface between sea level rise and changes in coastal morphology, and provide an alarming example of the difficulties in anticipating future conditions in highly dynamic, coastal environments.