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

EARLIER DISPLACEMENTS OF CRUST 281
glaciations in America and Europe during the Pleistocene
must be taken seriously.
If the number of these alleged major Pleistocene glacia-
tions is not satisfactorily established, the attempts at dating
them leave even more to be desired. A review of the past and
current literature on the subject reveals lack of agreement.
Estimates vary widely, and none of them has convincing support.
To make this plain, it is only necessary to compare the
various estimates. The table on page 282 shows the estimates
made by Penck and Bruckner, considered the leading Euro-
pean experts (whose work, however, was done before the de-
velopment of nuclear techniques of dating), and by Zeuner,
whose estimates were endorsed by the climatologist Brooks.
The reader will note that Zeuner divides each of the older
glaciations into a number of substages, some of which are
longer than the entire period covered by the Wisconsin
glaciation. The reader will recall that the interstadials and
the successive advances of the Wisconsin glaciation had dura-
tions of the order of two or three thousand years; he may
also note in the various cores shown later on that all the
cores show brief climatic changes of the same magnitude. It
is therefore impossible to concede that the earlier glaciations
could have had interstadials 40,000 or more years long. The
only explanation ever advanced for the oscillations of the Wisconsin
ice sheet that I know of is the one advanced in this
book: massive volcanism caused by displacement of the crust.
This explanation cannot, however, be reasonably applied to
oscillations 40,000 years in length.
We see that the estimates of Zeuner (52: 107) and of Penck
and Bruckner (52:107) are in profound disagreement.
It would be easily possible to multiply the number of such
contradictory estimates, or, if the reader pleases, he may accumulate
authorities who will support one of them; but is
it not obvious that if leading professional geologists can differ
to such an extent, no real reliance can be placed upon any of
their very approximate and very speculative estimates? And