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

54
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
away from one polar zone and Antarctica toward the other
one can adequately account for the facts. Moreover, it is true,
as can be seen from any globe, that a movement of the crust
sufficient to bring Hudson Bay down to its present latitude
from the pole would at the same time account for the glacia-
tion of all that half of Antarctica facing the Ross Sea.
There are a number of important conclusions to be drawn
from these Antarctic data, in addition to the remarkable con-
firmation of a displacement of the crust. One is that the rapid
rate of change indicated for the Wisconsin icecap may be
typical for the whole Pleistdcene, and therefore, very likely,
typical of older periods in the earth's history. Hardly less
important than this is the implication to be drawn from the
apparent fact that the ice ages, in these two instances, were
not contemporaneous. It follows, of course, that if the ice
ages we know most about were not contemporary
in the two
that those
hemispheres, there is no justification for assuming
we know little or nothing about were contemporary. Clearly,
with glacial periods so short, and the tempo of change so
rapid, there is no justification for claiming glaciation
in the
two hemispheres hundreds of millions of years ago to have
been simultaneous. This theory, which constitutes a harmful
dogma of contemporary science, should now be abandoned,
and with it must go most of the current speculations about
the causes of ice ages.
I cannot conclude this chapter without warning the reader
that, however clear these facts may be, there are still some
who will insist that the Hough-Urry cores show that the re-
cent glaciations were simultaneous in the two hemispheres.
This argument is based on the strange period of high temperature
that followed the ice age in North America, but was
world-wide in its effects. This warm period has been well es-
tablished, but its cause has been unknown. The essential facts
are given by Professor Flint:
. . . the evidence of the fossil plants, and, in addition, several en-
tirely independent lines of evidence, establish beyond doubt that the
climate (with some fluctuation) reached a maximum of warmth be-