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

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

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EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

might, under other circumstances, produce a doming up <strong>of</strong><br />

the crust in a local area or a lava flood.<br />

p. Changing<br />

Sea Levels<br />

An important problem closely related to that <strong>of</strong> mountain<br />

building is that <strong>of</strong> the cause <strong>of</strong> very numerous, and in some<br />

cases radical, changes in the elevations <strong>of</strong> land areas rela-<br />

tively to the sea level. Umbgrove finds that mountain folding<br />

has been related, in geological time, with uplift <strong>of</strong> land areas,<br />

or with withdrawal or regression <strong>of</strong> the sea (430:93). How-<br />

ever, it is clear that the uplifts were not confined merely to<br />

the folded areas, that is, to the mountains themselves, but<br />

affected large regions. Such uplifts, where whole sections <strong>of</strong><br />

the earth's crust were elevated without being folded, are re-<br />

ferred to as epeirogenic uplifts, to distinguish them from the<br />

uplifts <strong>of</strong> the folded mountain belts which may have resulted<br />

from the folding itself, and which are referred to as<br />

orogenic uplifts. As to the extent <strong>of</strong> the resulting changes in<br />

sea level, Umbgrove says:<br />

. . . <strong>The</strong> most important question concerns the depth to which<br />

the sea-level was depressed in distinct periods <strong>of</strong> intense regression,<br />

in other words, the extent <strong>of</strong> the change to which the distance be-<br />

tween the surface <strong>of</strong> the continents and the ocean floors was subjected<br />

during the pulsating rhythm <strong>of</strong> subcrustal processes. Joly was the<br />

only one who approached this question from the geophysical side,<br />

and he arrived at an order <strong>of</strong> 1000 meters. . . . (430:95).<br />

It becomes necessary, therefore, to find a connection be-<br />

tween the cause <strong>of</strong> the folding <strong>of</strong> the crust and the cause <strong>of</strong><br />

general, or epeirogenic, changes<br />

<strong>of</strong> elevation <strong>of</strong> continents<br />

and sea floors. Fortunately, this problem is not really so diffi-<br />

cult as it may seem at first glance. That it can be solved in<br />

terms <strong>of</strong> the assumption <strong>of</strong> displacements <strong>of</strong> the earth's crust<br />

is, I think, clear from the following considerations.<br />

Gutenberg has pointed out that if a sector <strong>of</strong> the crust, in<br />

gravitational equilibrium at the equator, is displaced pole-

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