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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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386<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

have to be satisfied, for the present, with the guess that the<br />

next displacement may be <strong>of</strong> roughly the same magnitude as<br />

the last one.<br />

If these guesses turn out to be correct, the next North Pole<br />

will be in the vicinity <strong>of</strong> Lake Baikal, in Siberia. North<br />

America, moving southward into the tropics,<br />

will subside<br />

some hundreds <strong>of</strong> feet relatively to sea level, and the ocean<br />

will occupy the river valleys and will divide the continent<br />

into several land areas. India will move northward out <strong>of</strong> the<br />

tropics, and since there will be no land to the south to provide<br />

a refuge for the fauna and flora, we shall have to expect<br />

the extinction <strong>of</strong> many species <strong>of</strong> animals and plants now<br />

confined to that country. Many other consequences may be<br />

unpredictable. <strong>The</strong> gradual climatic changes due to changing<br />

latitude will be accompanied <strong>by</strong> numerous sudden, violent,<br />

and destructive climatic changes due to volcanism.<br />

2. A General Summary<br />

In this book I have presented a highly detailed mass <strong>of</strong> mate-<br />

rial, and I have sought to relate it to a single, essentially<br />

simple hypothesis. It now remains to summarize the evidence,<br />

and the argument for the hypothesis.<br />

We have seen that the problem <strong>of</strong> the geographical stability<br />

<strong>of</strong> the poles has long been a vexatious matter for science.<br />

From time to time theories <strong>of</strong> polar shift have been advanced,<br />

supported <strong>by</strong> large quantities <strong>of</strong> evidence, but the proposed<br />

mechanisms have been found defective, and in consequence<br />

the theories have been rejected. <strong>The</strong> failure <strong>of</strong> the theories<br />

has led, in the following years, to neglect <strong>of</strong> the evidence, or<br />

to its analysis in accordance with theories conforming to the<br />

doctrine <strong>of</strong> the permanence <strong>of</strong> the poles. Although all the<br />

older theories <strong>of</strong> polar change, including that <strong>of</strong> Wegener,<br />

have been discredited, the evidence in favor <strong>of</strong> polar change<br />

has constantly increased. As a consequence, many writers at the

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