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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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194<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

and to have extended farther south on the low central plains<br />

<strong>of</strong> the Mississippi Valley than it did on the high mountain<br />

areas in the same latitudes farther west. But according to ac-<br />

cepted ideas about glaciation, if the ice age<br />

was the result <strong>of</strong><br />

a general lowering <strong>of</strong> world temperatures, the ice should<br />

have formed first in the mountain areas, and it should have<br />

extended farther south on them than in the low plains.<br />

<strong>The</strong>re has been no explanation <strong>of</strong> this, which may have been<br />

one <strong>of</strong> the problems that led Daly to remark that "<strong>The</strong> Pleis-<br />

tocene history <strong>of</strong> North America holds ten major mysteries<br />

for every one that has already been solved" (93:111).<br />

<strong>The</strong> assumption that the Hudson Bay region then lay at<br />

the pole would make the facts easy to explain, for in this case<br />

the western highlands would lie to the south <strong>of</strong> the plains<br />

region, and one would therefore expect thicker ice on the<br />

plains lying nearer the pole. Absence <strong>of</strong> continuous glaciation<br />

in Alaska and in the Arctic islands would be easily ex-<br />

plained. Furthermore, the fact that the European ice sheet<br />

was thinner than the North American and did not extend<br />

so far south would be understandable. <strong>The</strong> relationship be-<br />

tween the North American and contemporary European<br />

glaciations will be discussed further below.<br />

A second line <strong>of</strong> evidence for the position <strong>of</strong> North Amer-<br />

ica at the pole consists <strong>of</strong> the new data regarding recent<br />

climatic change in Antarctica, already discussed (Chapter II).<br />

A movement <strong>of</strong> the crust that would move North America<br />

southward about 2,000 miles would also necessarily move<br />

Antarctica that much nearer the South Pole (see globe).<br />

<strong>The</strong>refore, a displacement <strong>of</strong> the crust accounts both for the<br />

deglaciation <strong>of</strong> North America and for the expansion <strong>of</strong> the<br />

icecap in Antarctica, and it accounts for the two events being<br />

simultaneous. No other hypothesis so far suggested can ac-<br />

count for climatic revolutions in opposite directions on the<br />

two continents. No assumption <strong>of</strong> ice ages resulting from a<br />

simultaneous world-wide reduction <strong>of</strong> temperature will fit<br />

the facts. In a personal interview, I once asked Einstein if

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