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

THE MOUNTAINS
to its present latitude. If this occurred, it meant a displacement
of about 2,000 miles for eastern North America, but
of only about 500 miles for western Europe. Quite obviously,
crust adjustments and resulting friction must be propor-
tional to the amount of the displacement, and therefore friction
and resulting heat could be expected to be somewhat
greater in America.
To return, now, to our plateau basalts, we may observe
that, in a situation where the crust of the earth was con-
tinuously in motion over an extended period, a build-up
of heat in the crust might cause considerable melting in its
lower parts where the temperature was already very close to
the melting points of the rocks. This increase of heat would
link itself quite naturally, therefore, to an increase in the
number and intensity of volcanic eruptions, and to lava flows
of all kinds. By means of these eruptions and flows some of
the heat would be dissipated into the air; much of it, how-
ever, imprisoned in the lower part of the crust, would simply
increase the volume of the molten magmas.
While the increase of heat in the crust would naturally
favor larger lava flows, another factor would create the pos-
sibility of massive flows, or lava floods. A massive displacement
of the crust, because of the oblateness of the earth,
must produce temporary distortions of its shape, and of the
gravitational balance of the crust. The force of gravity subsequently
must gradually force the crust to resume its normal
position. This, of course, involves great pressure upon the
crust, and upon the molten or semimolten liquid material
under or within the crust. Pressures of this kind might oc-
casionally lead to the eruption of plateau basalts. The probable
magnitude of the distortions of the crust resulting from
will be considered in detail later on. It must
displacement
not be supposed, however, that every displacement of the
crust must inevitably produce lava floods. The latter would
perhaps be the result of an unusual combination of pressures
and fractures. The same combination of forces which might,
in one situation, produce volcanic mountains and island arcs