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

48
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
od. Horberg betrays evidence of the intensity of the shock
to accepted beliefs when he says that the results of the evi-
dence are so appalling from the standpoint of accepted theory
that it may be necessary either to abandon the concept of
gradual change in geology or to question the radiocarbon
method.
In this book I am not going to question the general re-
liability of the radiocarbon method. I intend merely to question
the theories with which the new evidence conflicts. Dr.
Horberg says that the necessity to compress all the known
stages of the Wisconsin glaciation into the incredibly short
period of barely 15,000 or 20,000 years involves an acceleration
of geological processes snowfall, rainfall, erosion,
sedimentation, and melting that seems to challenge the prin-
ciple laid down by the founder of modern geology, Sir
Charles Lyell, over a century ago. Lyell's principle, called
"uniformitarianism," was that geological processes have al-
ways gone on about as they are going on now.
The Wisconsin icecap went through a number of oscilla-
tions, warm periods of ice recession alternating with cold
periods of ice readvance. Horberg is at a loss to see what
could cause them to occur at the velocity required by the
radiocarbon dates. Allowing for extra time for ice growth be-
fore the evidence of massive glaciation in Ohio 25,000 years
ago, Horberg manages to expand this 15,000 years to 25,000
for the duration of the glacier, but this does not solve his
problem. Even so, the radiocarbon dates seem to require an
annual movement of the ice front of 2,005 feet, "two to nine
times greater than the rate indicated by varves and annual
moraines" (222:283).
The fact that these new facts call into question some basic
ideas in geology is recognized by Horberg:
of future studies can tell
Probably only time and the progress
whether we cling too tenaciously to the uniformitarian principle
in
our unwillingness to accept fully the rapid glacier fluctuations evi-
denced by radiocarbon dating (222:285).