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

146
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
Geologists are not agreed as to whether these features are valley
systems cut by streams and later submerged or depressions excavated
by currents beneath the sea (155).
Now this problem must be examined as a whole. Certain
facts are now obvious and can be plainly stated.
In the first place, if a continent can be lifted up a mile,
and the sea floor exposed, as in the case of Africa, surely it
can also be let down. Thus there is no reason for anyone to
lose his temper at the idea that some of these drowned sur-
faces were once above sea level. On the other hand, it is not
necessary to claim that they were in all instances eroded
above sea level. We saw, in the last chapter, that the basic
processes of mountain formation, folding, faulting, and volcanism,
are of a kind that can take place just as well below
as above sea level. The only factor in mountain formation
that is mainly operative on the land is erosion, and that is,
as we have seen, a secondary factor.
Secondly, one of the most impressive arguments
in favor
of the permanence of the ocean basins is that almost all the
sedimentary rocks that compose the continents appear to be
made of sediments that were laid down in comparatively
shallow water, on or near the continental shelves. We have
already seen, however, that parts of continents (at least) have
been submerged to great depths, and that parts of the deepsea
bottom have been uplifted to form land. Why, then, have
rocks composed of typical deep-sea sediments not been found?
A number of factors may account for this. The primary
factor may be the rate of sedimentation. In the deep sea this
is extraordinarily slow as low as one inch in 2,500 years.
Near the coasts it can be hundreds of times more rapid.
The theory presented in this book provides a mechanism
that would tend to operate against the consolidation of this
deep-sea sediment into rock. Frequent displacements of the
crust of the earth would naturally be accompanied by increased
turbulence on the ocean bottom, by which sediments
would be dispersed and mixed with other sediments. There
has been in recent years a great extension of our knowledge