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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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40<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

as lowered temperatures. If, however, precipitation was then greater<br />

over certain areas <strong>of</strong> the earth's surface than it is at present, a corollary<br />

seems to be implied that over other large areas evaporation was<br />

greater than normal to supply increased precipitation, and hence in<br />

these latter areas the climate was warmer than normal. This seems at<br />

first to be an astonishing conclusion. . . . We might propose the<br />

hypothesis that climatic conditions were far from steady in any one<br />

area, but were subject to large shifts, and that intervals <strong>of</strong> ameliorated<br />

conditions in some regions coincided with increased severity in others.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Pleistocene, then, may have been a period <strong>of</strong> sharper contrasts<br />

<strong>of</strong> climate and <strong>of</strong> shifting climates rather than a period <strong>of</strong> greater<br />

cold" (405:815-16).<br />

From a number <strong>of</strong> points <strong>of</strong> view, the foregoing passage is<br />

extremely remarkable. Stokes recognizes the fact that the<br />

basic assumption <strong>of</strong> contemporary geologists regarding the<br />

glacial periods is in conflict with the laws <strong>of</strong> physics. <strong>The</strong>n, in<br />

the passage he quotes, he draws attention to the implications,<br />

which seem to point directly to crust displacement, for in<br />

what other way can we explain how one part <strong>of</strong> the earth's<br />

surface was colder and another, at the same time, warmer<br />

than at present?<br />

One <strong>of</strong> the arguments that is advanced in support <strong>of</strong> the<br />

assumption <strong>of</strong> world-wide periods <strong>of</strong> colder weather (which<br />

remains the generally accepted assumption <strong>of</strong> glaciologists)<br />

has its basis in geological evidence purporting to prove that<br />

ice ages occurred simultaneously in both hemispheres. A<br />

decade ago, however, Kroeber pointed to the essential weak-<br />

ness <strong>of</strong> this geological evidence, when he showed the difficulty<br />

<strong>of</strong> correlating stratified deposits <strong>of</strong> different areas with each<br />

other:<br />

. . . <strong>The</strong>re is plenty <strong>of</strong> geologic evidence, in many parts <strong>of</strong> the<br />

earth, <strong>of</strong> changes <strong>of</strong> climates, especially between wet and dry areas;<br />

and some <strong>of</strong> these happened in the Pleistocene. But the correlation <strong>of</strong><br />

such changes as they occurred in widely separated regions, and espe-<br />

cially as between permanently ice-free and glaciated areas, is an intri-<br />

cate, tricky, and highly technical matter, on which the anthropological<br />

student must take the word <strong>of</strong> geologists and climatologists, and these<br />

are <strong>by</strong> no means in agreement. <strong>The</strong>y may be reasonably sure <strong>of</strong> one<br />

series <strong>of</strong> climatic successions in one region, and <strong>of</strong> another in a second

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