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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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212<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

Now, what Dr. Antevs says is that the radiocarbon dates<br />

from America don't make sense, and the radiocarbon method<br />

must be wrong (9:516). He attacks the method because the<br />

rates <strong>of</strong> withdrawal <strong>of</strong> the ice which it suggests are to him<br />

fantastic. He complains particularly about the disproportion<br />

in the indicated speeds <strong>of</strong> withdrawal in America and Europe.<br />

<strong>The</strong> radiocarbon method has indicated that the Mankato<br />

Maximum occurred between 11,000 and 10,000 years<br />

ago. This stage has been related chronologically to the socalled<br />

Salpausselka Stage in Europe. Antevs considers this<br />

totally unreasonable, because<br />

This correlation equates a point at less than one-quarter <strong>of</strong> the<br />

American ice-sheet radius with one at the half way mark in Europe.<br />

Clearly this lop-sided matching cannot be right.<br />

He says, further:<br />

Other implications are equally unreasonable. . . . <strong>The</strong> Canadian<br />

ice sheet would still have touched Lake Superior when the Scandina-<br />

vian ice sheet had entirely disappeared. . . .<br />

Antevs makes the conflict more explicit, as follows:<br />

<strong>The</strong> North American ice sheet would still have extended to the<br />

middle <strong>of</strong> the Great Lakes when the Scandinavian ice sheet had en-<br />

tirely disappeared, for the latter had melted from the Angermanalven<br />

basis <strong>by</strong> 8550 B.P. [Before the Present], and from Lapland <strong>by</strong> 7800<br />

B.P., and what is more, the ice would still have lingered in these lakes<br />

while the distinctly warmer Altithermal [Climatic Optimum] came<br />

and went. <strong>The</strong> ice retreat would have been exceedingly slow during<br />

the Altithermal but extraordinarily rapid during the last 3500 years,<br />

which have been only moderately warm (9:519).<br />

Antevs is therefore driven into a blank rejection <strong>of</strong> radio-<br />

carbon dating. He insists, in contradiction to all such datings,<br />

that the icecap must have left the Canadian Mattawa Valley<br />

about 13,700 years ago, and that the Mankato Maximum<br />

(which he refers to as the Valders Maximum) must have oc-<br />

curred about 19,000 years ago (9:520). In the discussion in<br />

the pages <strong>of</strong> the Journal <strong>of</strong> Geology, between him and Mrs.<br />

de Geer, Mrs. de Geer insists on the high reliability <strong>of</strong> the

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