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

IDS EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
cumference, the forces will be in proportion; the folds due
to the first compression will tend to be six times as long (and
accentuated) as those due to the second compression. The
former may ultimately correspond with the long axes of
the mountain ranges, and the latter to their radial axes. The
long, narrow, folded tracts referred to by Button are thus
explained.
In Figure II Mr. Campbell has suggested an idealized rep-
resentation of the formation of a mountain chain by a dis-
placement of the crust. The reader will note the long major
axis, and the shorter radial axes. That this is a fairly close
approximation to the patterns of existing mountain ranges
is obvious; however, a number of modifying factors must be
recognized. In the first place, we do not contemplate that a
mountain range can be completed in the course of one movement
of the crust. It is quite obvious, from the quantitative
considerations already mentioned, that a single displacement
could cause comparatively little folding, even if, as the result
of elastic yielding, most of the folding was concentrated in a
few areas. It is certain that many displacements would be required
to make a large mountain range, and since successive
displacements will not necessarily occur in the same directions
on the earth's surface, the resulting patterns might
rarely conform to the idealized pattern. And yet,
if most of
the folding in one displacement happened to be concen-
trated in one area, and if one or more successive displacements
happened to concentrate folding in the same area, a
mountain range might come into existence in a compara-
tively short period of two or three hundred thousand years.
We will return to this chronological aspect again.
It should not be thought that Mr. Campbell is in disagreement
with Button's statement, quoted above, that the com-
pressive mountain-folding forces have acted in one direction
only on the earth's surface. This would be a misunderstanding
of the case. The laws of physics require the operation of
equal and opposite forces for the production of effects. A
compression is the result of two equal and opposite pressures.