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

2i8 EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
course, have been the same in all parts of the world (allowing
some differences, perhaps, for vertical movements of the
land locally).
It should have been universal that is, the evi-
dences should be observable everywhere, on all the conti-
nents. There is, however, strong evidence in conflict with
each of these propositions.
The maximum rise in sea level that can be ascribed to the
melting of the Pleistocene ice sheets (assuming that the Ant-
arctic icecap existed contemporaneously with them) is about
300 feet. This is a liberal estimate. Yet, in a recent study,
Fisk and McFarlan show that the sea level during the Wisconsin
glaciation (on American coasts) was 450 feet below
the present level (153:294-96). Moreover, according to them,
this is a minimum estimate, and the probabilities favor a
greater lowering of the sea level in the late Pleistocene. Still
more interesting, they give a chart showing that the lowest
sea level was earlier than 28,000 years ago, or considerably
before the maximum of the Wisconsin ice sheet. This date
was established by radiocarbon (153:281). It can only mean
that the low sea level must be attributed to a cause other
than the withdrawal of water from the ocean to form that
ice sheet.
Furthermore, Fisk and McFarlan show that the sea was
rising 20,000 years ago, before the completion of the massive
Tazewell Advance that carried the Wisconsin icecap to its
maximum size (153:298). Surely, if the sea level were con-
trolled by the glaciers, it should have been falling. Finally,
Fisk and McFarlan show that the sea level had risen to
within 100 feet of its present level by 10,000 years ago. Yet
we know that by that time the Wisconsin glaciation was a
mere shadow of its former self, while the Scandinavian had
virtually ceased to exist. Is it likely that the remnants of these
ice sheets could later have raised the ocean level 100 feet?
The question is rendered even more doubtful by a news
item that comes to me while I write these lines. It is a dis-
patch to the New York Times by John Hillaby, dated from
Sheffield, England, September 2, 1956, giving an account of