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

n8 EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
radiant heat of the sun, and is uninfluenced by
heat from
within the earth. We shall have to consider the bearing of
this on another well-known fact, which is that earthquakes,
and other movements within the crust, are known to produce
heat as a consequence of friction between the moving crustal
blocks (194:158). Then, earthquakes are most frequent in
areas where there are distortions of the gravitational balance
of the crust, while heat gradients are steeper in such areas
(194:141). This indicates that any factor causing such distortions
may be a factor in the production of the earth's heat.
Considering these facts, what are the implications, so far
as the earth's heat is concerned, of a displacement of the
earth's crust? Can there be any doubt that a crust moving
slowly over a period of a good many thousand years must
generate an immense quantity of heat within itself? There
can be no doubt of this. The widespread fracturing, the friction
between crustal blocks, resulting from the increased
number of earthquakes, could have no other result. More-
over, Frankland has pointed out that friction between the
crust and the layer over which it moves must produce heat,
which may itself facilitate the displacement (168).
The heat thus produced would migrate both inwards into
the body of the earth and outwards into space. But, since the
rate of dissipation of this heat is so extremely slow, it follows
that displacements at relatively short intervals might produce
heat more rapidly than it could be dissipated. Over
hundreds of millions of years slight increments of heat from
this source may have accumulated to produce the earth's
present temperature. The assumption of frequent crust displacement
thus suggests a third possible source of the earth's
heat, in addition to those mentioned by Gutenberg.
If it is true, as Daly thought, that the heat gradient is
steeper in North America than in Europe, this fact serves
as additional confirmation of a displacement of the earth's
crust at the end of the Pleistocene. Later I shall present evi-
dence to suggest that the crust moved at that time in such
a direction as to bring North America down from the pole