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

220 EARTH S SHIFTING CRUST
ically to be expected. Then, as the western side of the Atlantic
was closer to the meridian of maximum displacement,
it would have been displaced through more degrees of lati-
tude, and in consequence there should have been greater
subsidence on the American side of the ocean. Our theory
implies that the Hudson Bay region was moved southward
about 2,000 miles, while at the same time the southward
movement of France amounted to no more than five hundred.
The ratio of these distances is about four to one, and
this is very close to the estimated subsidence on the western
side of the Atlantic, of about 1,000 feet, as compared to that
on the eastern side, of less than 300.
From the other side of the globe comes equally impressive
evidence. Wallace argued for a subsidence of at least 600 feet
of the coastlines of Southeast Asia and Indonesia at the end of
the Pleistocene. These areas lie close to the same meridian
of maximum displacement, the goth meridian, which runs
through Labrador, and accordingly they should have been
displaced the same distance as eastern North America, and
the resulting subsidence should have been of the same order.
The Philippines are thought to have become separated from
Asia only some 10,000 years ago; the separation of New
Guinea from Australia and of Java from Sumatra may have
been even more recent. Again, the subsidence may have considerably
exceeded 600 feet, which Wallace gives as a minimum
(444:24-25). Needless to say, a rise of the sea level of
this extent cannot be explained as the result of melting of
glaciers.
I have already mentioned the fact that some geophysicists
seriously doubt that the rise of the land around the former
glaciated tracts since the end of the ice age
rebound. It may be more correctly accounted for as a part of
is due to isostatic
the aftermath of the last displacement of the crust. We have
seen that polar areas are, according to the theory,
areas re-
cently moved poleward. Accordingly, they have undergone
compression and uplift, the major part of the uplift being
due to the lag in isostatic readjustment of the crust to the