The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

THE MOUNTAINS 1O1
The amount of the folding would be increased as the result
of any previous process of extension of that area of the crust
in any previous displacement.
The elastic properties of the crust would probably be of
much greater importance in this compressive phase than in
the extensive phase of a displacement. This is because compression
could lead to flexing or bending of the crust, to a
slight degree, without a permanent change of shape. It might
be possible to bend or flex the crust slightly, and hold it so
for thousands of years, without fracture or folding of the
rock strata, or even without much plastic flow of the ma-
terials. This would mean no permanent change in the conformation
of the surface. A compressive tension might be
exerted for thousands of years, causing a flexing, and then
be relaxed, permitting the crust to return to its original
shape. It may be supposed that in areas sufficiently removed
from the meridian of maximum displacement, the com-
pressive tensions on the crust might be contained by its tensile
strength, and the crust might yield elastically, without
deformation. If this occurred, however, the total amount of
the compression for the whole circumference of the globe
would probably be concentrated at comparatively few points,
where the compressive stresses happened to be in excess of
the strength of the crust; here there would be a considerable
amount of folding of the rock strata. It is obvious, also, that
these points would tend to coincide with existing geosynclines,
which would naturally represent comparatively weak
zones, where the crust would be less able to withstand the
horizontal stress.
Mr. Campbell suggests that in an area displaced poleward,
no fewer than four pressures will be operating simultaneously
on the crust. There will be, in the first place, two
pressures developing from opposite directions toward the
meridian of displacement. These will arise because of the
diminishing circumference. Two other pressures
will simul-
taneously develop at right angles to these, as the result of the
reduced radius. Since the radius is only one sixth of the cir-