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Charles Hapgood (1904-1982) |
After graduating from Harvard, Charles Hapgood taught
history at Keene State College in New Hampshire. In 1949 one of his students
asked about Atlantis, and he transformed the query into a research project, questioning
the gradualist rules of geology and seeking evidence of a catastrophe large enough
to destroy the fabled land. For 10 years, aided by his eager students, Hapgood
worked on his theory of earth crust displacement - an update of Hugh Auchincloss
Brown's theory that the entire planet has previously capsized. Brown's theory
simply stated that as the Antarctic polar ice cap gains weight [9], the planet becomes less stable,
eventually becomes unbalanced and topples over. The relative weights are more
akin to a speck of dust on an automobile tyre than anything more serious - the
Antarctic icecap weighs less than one millionth of the entire planet. Hapgood
doubted that an accumulation of ice at the poles was enough to tip the entire
planet over. He believed that only the crust shifted.
Crustal
displacement, from Hapgood's point of view, is a very violent and sudden shifting
of only the "skin" of the planet Earth (the crust's thickness is only
0.005% of the equatorial diameter). This shift causes various disasters, with
each disaster triggering another, and so on. Hapgood suggested that each Ice
Age would not affect the whole earth at the same time, but only two regions of
it - those that shifted into polar regions.
If it were
only the skin that shifted, as Hapgood proposed, then the ice cap mechanism becomes
more likely. However I do wonder whether this process could be infinitely repeatable,
for if the poles ever ended up in oceanic areas, then sufficient ice would never
be able to accumulate.
 This
is just a small portion of my online book, Survive 2012 - a look into possible
ways our world might end, and how to survive. Available in bookstores sometime
before 2012, fingers-crossed... |
In
1958 an in depth explanation was published in his book titled Earth's Shifting
Crust, with its endorsement by Albert Einstein. Perhaps his ideas were just
too radical for, despite the endorsement, and although he managed to avoid the
ridicule previously allocated to Velikovsky, academics and the public alike ignored
his book.
Undaunted by this lack of acclaim, he
continued to work on his theory, with a major update being published in 1970,
re-named The Path of the Pole. Helped by recent advances in geology,
Hapgood replaced the ice cap mechanism with a trigger coming from within the Earth
itself. Although he was unsure precisely what that trigger was, it was most likely
something involving gravitational imbalances and centrifugal forces. In the introduction
he wrote:
"Polar wandering is based
on the idea that the outer shell of the earth shifts about from time to time,
moving some continents toward and others away from the poles, changing their climates.
Continental drift is based on the idea that the continents move individually...
A few writers have suggested that perhaps continental drift causes polar wandering.
This book advances the notion that polar wandering is primary and causes the displacement
of continents.... This book will present evidence that the last shift of the
earth's crust (the lithosphere) took place in recent time, at the close of the
last ice age, and that it was the cause of the improvement in climate."[10]
Hapgood
suggested three previous locations of the poles. The most recent North Pole is
Hudson Bay, which was the epicentre of the North American ice sheet during the
last Ice Age. The previous sites were in the Greenland Sea, and the Yukon district
of Canada, although his evidence for these is totally dependant on radio-carbon
dating.[11] Each
shift was approximately 30°. These diagrams show where the previous North Poles
were located, with their corresponding equators:
- Yukon
- Greenland
Sea
- Hudson
Bay
- Present
Pole
| 
|
1. Yukon |
|
2.
Greenland Sea | 
3.
Hudson Bay |
Interestingly,
the Amazon jungle has remained at the equator during each of these shifts, which
may account for its enormity.
 |
James Bowles |
James Bowles
is a retired civil engineer who worked for NASA sub-contractors on the Apollo
moon program. In his book The Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, gives
us a straightforward, easy to grasp theory on how the crust can shift.
On the day of the pig roast everything was ready. The spit
mechanism was in place, the pit had been dug, there were all kinds of charcoal,
and all the guests were milling about. All we needed to start the festivities
was the pig and a match. So my dear wife, along with Bonny, led us into the bathroom
where the pig was laying covered with ice in the bathtub. But one look at the
pig and I knew we were in trouble! . I'd figured on a fifty pound pig, because
that's what we'd talked about, but this had to be 100 pounds if it was an ounce..
Well
now that one and a half inch of galvanized water pipe looked like a tooth pick
next to the pig, but it was too late to do anything about it at this point, besides
somebody had lit the charcoal.. Half way through the night, the pipe broke, and
the pig fell into the fire.. Well to make a long story short, a friend of mine
and I went into town and got a bigger pipe from behind the garage and put everything
back together again.[11a]
| The
Spit Mechanism | 
|
The
point is that the pipe didn't just break, it broke from fatigue.
This
is torque, forces created by rotation. Bowles calls it Rotational-Bending, or
the RB-Effect. If enough tension is happening within our planet, and it is constant,
then one day something must give, slip or break. Everything that suffers stress
will eventually crack. In our planet's case it would be the semi-plastic attachment
of the crust to the asthenosphere. The stress would also create heat, and this
could be a simple explanation for volcanoes - an outlet valve for all the heat
created by the stresses within the earth. Bowles points out that an easy way
to break a piece of wire is to bend it backwards and forwards, over and over,
until it snaps. The ends of the broken wire will be quite hot - heat being a
by-product of stress.
Bowles uses the analogy of
cargo on a ship to further clarify his idea: When cargo is tied securely, it
will ride with the ship and not come to any harm. But if the ropes are loose,
and the cargo slips and slides, then damage can occur.
The
earth's crust is not securely tied; rather it is connected to the core via a series
of semi-plastic layers, some of which are seas of molten rock and liquid iron.
The waves in the cargo analogy correspond to the gravitational pulls of the moon,
sun and (to a much lesser extent) the other planets. Our situation is that we
have a crust that is 99.9% securely tied to the planet's core. The sun and moon
are constantly tugging away, testing the attachment. Eventually something has
to give.
The centrifugal forces try to shift matter
towards the equator. This is where the stress is. We talk about a pole shift,
but technically it's the entire crust that shifts, around two fulcrum points,
due to stresses towards the equator. I came across a science Q&A website
run by NASA, and found questions regarding the number of earthquakes in Antarctica.
Here are the expert's answers:
Antarctica
is unusual in that there are very few earthquakes there. Of all the seven or
nine continents, or of all the 7 or 25 plates (depending on how you count), it
has the fewest earthquakes, and it has none of the big, damaging kind.There are
very few earthquakes in Antarctica. It is one of the questions we are trying
to answer out there. There are numbers of plate boundaries and we have always
been astonished that we haven't seen more earthquakes. We have wanted to see
them, we have tried to record them, but Antarctica is a real puzzle because there
are very few earthquakes. There should be many more considering the type of plate
boundaries there are, and the type of continental structures there are, but there
aren't that many. We are trying to work it out. But now it is still a puzzle.
| 
|
| The
polar regions of this globe are unaffected by the forces at work, hence very few
earthquakes. |
It is a puzzle
if the standard continental drift model remains in use. The R-B Effect theory
of Bowles declares that the closer to the equator you get, the more earthquakes
there are, due to the forces of tension and compression.
When
I went to high school, I was shown a trick that fascinated me. Firstly, you wedge
a ballpoint pen into your desk somehow. Then you get the spring from inside a
broken pen, and you stretch it out. Using this wire like a two person wood saw,
you cut through the bottom of the pen's clip, and saw right through to the top
of the pen. It has to be done fast. This action cuts the plastic, but friction
creates heat and causes the plastic to melt together again, just behind the cutting
action. The result is a pen with a surgical scar where the clip joins. I figure
this is what happens to the earth when the crust slips - it breaks away, and then
cements itself in place again.
In
recent times orthodox scientists are re-assessing our planet's internal mechanics,
and have finally started to accept pole shifts as a possibility:
July
1996: Scientists
at Columbia University in New York confirmed that the earth's inner core was spinning faster than the
planet itself, by approximately 1/3 of a second per
day, allowing it to lap the Earth's surface approximately once every 400
years. This may help explain Earth's magnetic fields, and why they periodically
reverse.
1997: Researchers at the California Institute of Technology reported that
an evolutionary big bang, with relative evolutionary rates of more than 20 times
normal, coincided with another apparently unique event in earth history; a 90-degree
change in the direction of Earth's spin axis relative to the continents.
The
poleshift began about 530 million years ago, taking roughly 15 million years to
complete. [Throughout this book I ask that you ignore these large time periods,
and allow that current dating techniques might, for some reason, be fallible.]
As
slow as this sounds, normal continental drift cannot account for movement at such
a speed. Dr. Joseph Kirschvink, a geologist and lead author of the study, speculates
that it was due to:
"true
polar wander" which is caused by "an imbalance in the mass distribution of the
planet itself, which the laws of physics force to equalise in comparatively rapid
time scales. During this redistribution, the entire solid part of the planet moves
together, avoiding the internal shearing effects which impose the speed limit
on conventional plate motions." [12]
The
study speculates that changing weather patterns broke up ecosystems into smaller,
isolated communities, thus promoting rapid evolution.
The
study also implies that poleshifts and evolution have occurred in unison, although
a different reason for this will be explained in Chapter XX
January
2000: Professor Sagar of Texas A&M University and Anthony Koppers
of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have, while studying underwater volcanoes,
found evidence of poles shifting, albeit 84 million years ago. The shift consisted
of "rapid latitude changes in various locales", with rapid meaning a relatively
rapid period of two million years.
"We
calculate that the sites of Washington D.C. and Dakar, Senegal would have shifted
south by 15 to 20 degrees".
The
article is highly technical but it appears they locate a previous pole at 58.9°N,
337.4°E[13]
How
long will it be before a poleshift of 10,000 years ago is validated by scientists?
Discuss Survive
2012 at our forumGive the author your thoughts, and discuss any 2012
ideas with others, at 2012 Forum |
Comments from Visitors
Paracelse:
I tought Cuvier was the first one to present a clear view of catastrophism without including any religious agenda. He could not mention earth crust displacement, as at that time the concept of tectonics plates was not even considered. Cuvier died in the early 18th century.
(06.07.2004, 17:39)
marvin b:
Do the theories of crustal displacement and pole shifts account for isostatic rebound? The "experts" seem to think that Hapgood's initial theory, along with Einstein's endorsements, do not allow for the effect of isostacy on the sub-glacial topography of Antarctica. Indeed, the land-mass on the Piri Reis and Oronteus Finaeus Maps is said to more closely resemble Australia than Antarctica, which is something I find hard to believe.
(16.08.2004, 08:46)
Rachel K:
I actually heard there was a big earthquake recently near Antarctica
(28.12.2004, 16:17)
Viv Broadbent:
Hi Folks'
- 2012 is possibly the end of an era, not, the end of the world as such. (Many could perish & many will suvive)(a possibility) What's wrong with Venus coming from Jupiter? as ancient people believed, & stablising it's orbit with it's interactin (sometimes disasterous)with other planets as Velikovsky writes. What's more Velikovsky explained to me the forming of fosils & coal(his explanation made sense to me anyway).What is not generally known is that NASA makes good use of much of Velikovskys ideas with NO aknowledgement whatsoever to the man himself. And James Bowles RB-efect etc. following from Charles Hapgood's work, veeery interesting,& like Velikovskys work it makes sense, if you can look at it with an open mind. (& the Forbidden Archeoligy 'Hidden History of the Human Race'). More of this type of work please before it's too late(2012)
(22.01.2005, 23:13)
shell:
The earthquake was was actually closer to New Zealand than Antartica. It was 8.1 and situated 740km south west of Invercargill (South Island NZ) and occurred 3 days before the tsunami. Some scientists think the 2 earthquakes are related as they appeared to happen at the opposite ends of the Indo Australian plate and was a catalyst to the Indian ocean earthquake.
(05.02.2005, 04:16)
The comments section is now closed, but you can still email me, or even
better, visit 2012 Forum
Script by Alex
|
[9] Note: there have been numerous studies
undertaken and as many show that the Antarctic ice cap is growing as those that
show it to be melting.
[11] Hapgood stated that as hard as it
was to find evidence for the Hudson Bay location, the difficulties in locating
the previous poles were much greater. Earth's Shifting Crust, page 275
[11a] James Bowles, The
Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, Gemini Books, 1998, pages 33-34
[12] Science,
July 25, 1997 - Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental
Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander by Joseph L. Kirschvink, Robert
L. Ripperdan, and David A. Evans
[13] Science,
Jan 21, 2000, p455-459
