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

THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH 175
lithosphere under India and the Arabian Sea is being upwarped.
The fact that Fenno-Scandia, though less (negatively) loaded than the
Arabian Sea-India region, is being upwarped, as if by isostatic adjust-
ment, emphasizes the need to examine the Asiatic field with particular
care. . . . (97-365)-
Let us remember that a negative load means simply pres-
sure from within the earth outwards, and positive load pressure
from the surface inward. In principle, they are the same
in so far as their evidence for the strength of the crust goes.
It seems that here the crust is quite able to bear a large load
over a great span without yielding. Daly points out that many
parts of India are distorted on the positive side; there is an
excess of matter over considerable areas, and he remarks:
. . . India, among all the extensive regions with relatively close
networks of plumb-bob and gravity stations, is being regarded by
some high authorities as departing so far from isostasy that one
should no longer recognize a principle of isostasy at all. . . . (97:224-
*5).
A particularly important aspect of these great deviations
from gravitational balance of the crust in India is that they
are not local distortions, not the result of local surface fea-
tures such as hills and valleys. These surface features may
well once, and quite recently, have been in good isostatic bal-
ance. The distortion lies deeper:
... In India practically all the gravity anomalies seem to have
no apparent relation to local conditions. Only one explanation
seems possible that is, that they are due to a very deep seated gentle
undulation of the lower crustal layers underlying all the superficial
rocks; it is evidently a very uniform, broad sweeping feature
at a great depth, and must be uncompensated, since if it were
compensated it would cause no anomaly at the surface (97:241-42).
Forced to find some way of explaining how the crust could
bear such loads (positive and negative) in India and still yield
easily to isostatic adjustment in other areas, Daly suggests
that the strength of the crust in India might be explained by
a recent lateral compression of the whole peninsula, which,