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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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244<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

<strong>of</strong>ten resorted to a method that was effective but mysterious,<br />

for I could not understand why it worked. I learned that if<br />

the vegetables got frosted even heavily frostedthey would<br />

out before<br />

not be seriously damaged if I could manage to get<br />

sunrise and thoroughly hose them <strong>of</strong>f, washing away the<br />

frost. If, however, the sun should rise before I was finished,<br />

the unwashed vegetables would be damaged. It would seem,<br />

according to the explanation given <strong>by</strong> Meryman, that the<br />

frost damage was the result <strong>of</strong> recrystallization <strong>of</strong> the ice that<br />

had formed within the vegetable fibers. Small crystals, growing<br />

into large ones in the hour or so before the sun was up<br />

far enough to melt them, evidently caused the damage.<br />

It follows, from this analysis <strong>of</strong> the mechanics <strong>of</strong> freezing,<br />

that the preservation <strong>of</strong> mammoth meat for thousands <strong>of</strong><br />

years may be accounted for <strong>by</strong> normal initial freezing, followed<br />

<strong>by</strong> a sharp fall in temperature. Whenever the meat<br />

was preserved in an edible condition the deep freeze must<br />

have been uninterrupted; there must have been no thaws<br />

sufficient to bring the temperature near the freezing point.<br />

Let us now take a closer look at one <strong>of</strong> these preserved<br />

mammoths, and see what it may have to tell us.<br />

5. <strong>The</strong> Beresovka Mammoth<br />

Perhaps the most famous individual mammoth found preserved<br />

in the permafrost was the so-called Beresovka mam-<br />

moth. This mammoth was discovered sticking out <strong>of</strong> the<br />

ground not far from the bank <strong>of</strong> the Beresovka River in<br />

Siberia about 1901. Word <strong>of</strong> it reached the capital, St. Peters-<br />

burg. It so happened that, a long time before, word <strong>of</strong><br />

another mammoth had come to the ears <strong>of</strong> Tsar Peter the<br />

Great. With his strong interest in natural science, the Tsar<br />

had issued a ukase ordering that whenever thereafter another<br />

mammoth was discovered, an expedition should be sent out<br />

<strong>by</strong> his Imperial Academy <strong>of</strong> Sciences to study it.<br />

In accordance with this standing order, a group <strong>of</strong> dis-

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