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

io8 EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
would often coincide approximately with those of earlier
periods.
We find in this very fact the answer to another of the mys-
teries of geology, the so-called "rejuvenation" of similar fea-
tures in the same geographical situations at various times.
The term "rejuvenation" is a commonplace of geological
literature, and is especially emphasized by Umbgrove. He
is puzzled by the fact that old geological features have re-
been called back to life. It seems that this renewal
peatedly
of old topographies may be explained by the accidental re-
turn of the poles to approximately the same places.
There is nothing remarkable about the fact that only two
world-wide fracture systems can now be recognized in the
crust. If each successive displacement produced a new grid-
iron pattern of fractures and resulting surface features, it
must, in addition, have disrupted the evidence of previous
patterns. In a long series of displacements, the older fracture
patterns must soon be reduced to an indistinguishable
jumble. It is probable that the two systems now recognizable
date only from the last two displacements of the crust (to be
discussed later), even though many of the fractures and indi-
vidual topographic features now coinciding with these sys-
tems may date from remote periods.
It is not true, of course, that in one displacement of the
crust all fractures all over the earth will form a single rec-
tilinear pattern. This can be made clear from an example.
Let us suppose (as we shall in Chapter VII) that North Amer-
ica was moved directly southward at the end of the last ice
age. Campbell has suggested that major fractures would run
north and south (meridionally) and minor fractures east and
west, and this would be true of the whole Western Hemi-
sphere, which was, presumably, moved southward, and of
the opposite side of the earth, which was equally displaced
northward. But what about Europe? If, before the last dis-
placement, the pole was situated in or near Hudson Bay, it
seems that the last displacement must have created diagonal
and not meridional fractures in Europe, for the reason that