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

224
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
of the islands, and their separation from Asia, are attributed
to deformation of the earth's crust itself. Moreover, it is un-
likely that Smith had any conception of how recently these
events occurred. He probably thought of the Pleistocene (and
the ice age) as ending 20,000 or 30,000 years ago. Conse-
quently, the structural changes
in the crust that he discusses
seem to have occurred at a rate which, like the unwarping
of the crust in North America discussed by Antevs, is in-
consistent with the speeds of geological change normally
considered by geologists. There appears to be no rational
explanation for such an acceleration of the tempo of geolog-
ical change, except a displacement of the crust.
There is another important problem connected with the
changes in sea level. It seems that many of them occurred in
an abrupt fashion, so suddenly that the continuous cutting
of the coastline by the sea was unable to keep up with the
vertical movement of the land. Brooks refers to numerous
strandlines at elevations of about 90, 126, and 180 feet above
the present sea level, which may be traced over considerable
areas (52:491). It seems reasonable that if the rise of the land
in these localities (or the general fall of the sea) was gradual,
the erosive action of the sea would have been able to keep
extending the beach downward continuously. We would
then have a continuous beach formation extending from 180
feet above the present sea level, down to the present sea
margin. We have, on the contrary, a series of completely
distinct elevated beaches. It would seem that the changes in
elevation were comparatively rapid.
There is a possibility that this phenomenon is connected
with the irregularities of the process of crust displacement
referred to above. If the interstadials and the repeated re-
advances of the glaciers during the North American ice age
resulted from the process I have described, the same process
of storage and sudden release of stresses in the moving crust
could easily account for abrupt changes in the elevation of
sections of the crust. I am not suggesting that they occurred
in periods of a few days or hours. The facts would be satisfied