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

THEICEAGES 53
bottom of the Ross Sea 6,000 years ago is not the date of the
beginning of the last change of climate in Antarctica. A considerable
time must have elapsed between the fall of temperature
on the continent and the beginning of the deposition of
the glacial sediment. An icecap must grow to a considerable
thickness before it can start to move by gravity, and can start
to throw off icebergs at the coast. Moreover, we must suppose
that the change of climate must have been gradual at first. It
seems reasonable, therefore, to allow a period of the order
of about 10,000 years from the time the climate started to
change to the time when the glacial sediment began to be
deposited on the sea bottom. This is all the more likely since
most of the coasts of Antarctica seem to be bounded by moun-
tain chains, which the icecap would have to cross.
Where do these considerations lead us? They lead us to the
conclusion that the melting of the great icecap in North
America about 10,000 years ago and the beginning of the
massive advance of the Antarctic icecap may have been
roughly contemporary; that as one icecap melted, the other
one grew.
Let us pause to consider the implications of this astonish-
ing conclusion. For one thing, it is clear that no such change
as the growth or removal of even a considerable part of a
continental icecap covering 6,000,000 square
miles of the
earth's surface can result from purely local causes. At present
the Antarctic icecap profoundly affects the climate of the
whole world. The great anticyclonic winds, blowing outward
from the continent in all directions, influence the directions
of ocean currents, and the climates of all the lands in the
Southern Hemisphere. The North American icecap was
equally a factor in k world climate. If one icecap appeared
when the other disappeared, then both of these great con-
temporary changes of climate must be supposed
to have re-
sulted from some cause operating on the globe as a whole.
But what kind of cause could glaciate one continent and
deglaciate the other? It seems quite clear that only a shift of
the crust of the earth such as would have moved America