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

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EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
have to express themselves somehow. There would be no
place to go but up. A striking confirmation of this may be
found in the extraordinary fact that Mt. Everest and possibly
much of the Himalayan range appear to have been
raised from 100 to 200 feet by the gigantic earthquake of
Now we learn from Daly that gravitationally the Hima-
layas are already too high. They are, or were before the
earthquake, over 700 feet higher than they should have
been for good isostatic adjustment. Earthquakes are generally
supposed to perform the function of enabling the crust to
adjust to the force of gravity. If an area stands too high,
earthquakes occur during a process of settling down to
equilibrium. If an area is too low, earthquakes may occur as
it is rising. But what shall we say about an earthquake that
finds an area already too high, and shoves it up further?
This earthquake is not behaving according to the rules. It
is not tending to establish the stability of the crust, but rather
is exposing the crust to a situation of increased strain after
the quake.
But most important of all, where could the compressive,
horizontally directed force have come from to cause this
earthquake? The best reason for putting forth the claims of
the Antarctic icecap is that, so far, no one has produced a
more reasonable suggestion. It is interesting that the editors
of Life, in their illustrated account of the great quake in
Assam, called it "the most mysterious earthquake of modern
times/'
There are a few additional items that appear to fit into
this picture. In the very year in which the Assam earthquake
occurred (1950) another great earthquake on the same merid-
ian, but on the opposite side of the earth, virtually destroyed
the city of Cuzco. Also near the same meridian, in Mexico,
we have recently seen the rapid creation of the great new
volcanic mountain of Paricutfn, an event that Campbell
ascribes to the effects of the increasing bursting stress on the
crust in the earth's equatorial bulge. Finally, it may be worth