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

THE MOUNTAINS 8l
Sierra Nevada Mountains of California appear to have been
formed in this way. According to Daly, they represent the
tilting of a single
block of the earth's crust some 600 miles
long (98:90). Some folding of the crust, however, had previously
taken place. Many great chasms, extended cliff forma-
tions, and rift valleys appear to have been formed by the
cracking and drawing apart of the crust, and by the elevation
or subsidence of the different sides. The great African Rift
of this sort of
Valley is perhaps the best-known example
formation; the rift of which it is a part, as we shall see below,
has recently been connected with a world-wide system of
great submarine rifts. The cause of all this cracking and
tilting is still one of the mysteries of science.
The greatest mountain systems on the earth's surface have
been formed as the result of the lateral compression and folding
of the crust. Since folding is the cause of most mountain
building it must hold our particular attention. As already
suggested, science is particularly at a loss to explain
the fold-
ing. A number of suggestions have been advanced, but they
are all deficient for various reasons.
A part of the public is under the impression that moun-
tains have been formed by the action of running water, wear-
ing away the stone, eroding the tablelands, and depositing
layers of sediment in the valleys and in the sea. Although it
cannot be denied that erosion has been a powerful factor in
shaping many mountains, and may have been the main factor
in shaping some of them (for example, Mt. Monadnock, in
New Hampshire, which I can see from my window as I write
these words), it cannot have been the principal cause of the
formation of our great folded mountain ranges.
Geologists who have argued in favor of this theory have
pointed out that the deposition of sediment in narrow crustal
depressions may have been a cause of the folding of the crust.
The folding could have resulted in part from the sinking of the
valley bottoms under the weight of the sediments. The process
will be found described in detail in almost any textbook
of geology. There are serious objections to it, and no geol-