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

EARLIER DISPLACEMENTS OF CRUST 309
climatic history of the Pleistocene. Eventually, perhaps, this
can be done. Much more practical questions remain to be
considered.
We must consider whether the rate of geological change
suggested for the last 130,000 years, by the evidence presented
in this book, can be typical for the entire history of
the earth. It is plain from the cores that rapid change has
characterized the record for the Pleistocene. Radiocarbon
dating has established the fact that all the geological processes
of glacial growth and decay, precipitation and sedimentation,
were enormously accelerated during the Wisconsin ice age.
Emiliani has argued, as already mentioned, that all the ice
ages of the Pleistocene occurred in the last 300,000 years,
which implies a threefold increase in the velocity of geological
change, as compared with the older views. Studies of the
delta of the Mississippi River suggest numerous important
changes at short intervals (165, 276, 349). Blanchard has
shown that there were at least twelve major climatic changes
in the valley of the Somme since the first glaciation, accompanied
by changes in sea levels, fauna and flora, and human
cultures. As already mentioned, he argues that only polar
change can explain this record (38).
For the older geological periods, there are a number of
lines of evidence that suggest rapid change. So insistently,
indeed, does this theme occur in the strata that Brooks, in
his Climate Through the Ages, refers to a 2i,ooo-year cycle
of climatic change which he believes operated through the
whole Eocene Period, or for about 15,000,000 years. His figure,
of course, is only a rough average, and the intervals may
have been very unequal in length. With reference to a still
older period he remarks, "Alternations in the Cretaceous
of U.S.A. suggest a cycle that is estimated at 21,000 years,
but there are no annual layers" (52:108).
Irregularities in the cycle are indicated by another study
of Eocene beds covering about 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 years.
In this case annual varves were present, and they indicated
long-term changes at 23,000 and 50,000 years (52:108). Some