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

X :
LIFE
In the preceding chapters we have reviewed a mass of evi-
dence that suggests displacements of the earth's crust, at
comparatively short intervals, during the earth's history. We
shall now see that this assumption throws some light on the
process of evolution.
/. The Cause of Evolution
A century ago, in the Origin of Species, Darwin suggested
natural selection as the mechanism to account for evolution.
The combination of the occurrence of natural variations
with elimination of the unfit individuals in the competitive
struggle for existence helped to explain a process of un-
in the forms of life. Darwin did not
ending, gradual change
consider that this was the whole answer. He admitted, for
example, that he could not explain the numerous instances
of the world-wide extinction of many forms of life simultaneously,
especially in those cases where, apparently, there were
no competitors and no successors to the extinct forms. Biolo-
gists today are in agreement that evolution has occurred, but
they also feel that the process has not been satisfactorily ex-
plained. Thus Dr. Barghoorn, of Harvard, has recently referred
to "our limited understanding of the actual causes of
evolution," while quoting Dr. George Gaylord Simpson,
author of the widely read Meaning of Evolution, as remark-
". . . search for the cause of evolution has been aban-
ing,doned"
(375:238). There is a tendency at the present time
for specialists to recognize a large number of interacting fac-
tors that may, together, conceivably account for evolution,
though their relative importance is not agreed upon. This
situation does not exclude the possibility that the confusion