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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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284<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

sand years a warming <strong>of</strong> the climate would be noticeable<br />

in the areas moving equatorward, and a cooling <strong>of</strong> the<br />

climate would occur in areas moving poleward, but these<br />

long-term trends <strong>of</strong> change would <strong>of</strong>ten be modified or<br />

even reversed <strong>by</strong> other factors. Massive volcanism would<br />

erupt before the crust had moved far, and the effect might<br />

be to check the retreat <strong>of</strong> the icecap, and even to cause its<br />

readvance after it began to retreat. We can see that this seems<br />

to have happened with the Wisconsin icecap: for thousands<br />

<strong>of</strong> years after it began to grow thinner, and to retreat, it<br />

went through phases <strong>of</strong> readvance.<br />

Before the final disappearance <strong>of</strong> glacial sediment from the<br />

Ross Sea bottom about 40,000 years ago, then, we must assume<br />

that the icecap then in Antarctica had gone through<br />

an initial phase <strong>of</strong> very gradual retreat, followed <strong>by</strong> perhaps<br />

several phases <strong>of</strong> readvance, until finally it withdrew entirely<br />

from the Ross Sea coast, and melted sufficiently to permit<br />

free-flowing rivers to bring down temperate-type sediment<br />

from the interior. It seems obvious, on the analogy <strong>of</strong> the<br />

Wisconsin icecap, that we should allow a period <strong>of</strong> time <strong>of</strong><br />

the order <strong>of</strong> 10,000 years or so for this entire process. This<br />

suggests, then, that the movement <strong>of</strong> the crust began about<br />

50,000 years ago. However, it does not mean that the movement<br />

ended 40,000 years ago; it might even have continued for<br />

another 10,000 years. <strong>The</strong> cores contain no evidence on that<br />

point. It may have taken much more than 10,000 years to<br />

shift the crust. <strong>The</strong> core evidence, however, may be used to<br />

support the thesis that the crust displacement that brought<br />

the Hudson Bay region to the pole started about 50,000 years<br />

ago. In the following discussion we will tentatively consider<br />

that the previous position <strong>of</strong> the pole was in southern Green-<br />

land.<br />

a. <strong>The</strong> Arctic Cores<br />

In the last few years Soviet expeditions in the Arctic Ocean<br />

have taken a number <strong>of</strong> deep-sea cores, and have dated them

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