Tag: Charles Hapgood

Antarctic Ice Core records resolve competing Pole Shift Theories

A declassified CIA document called The Adam and Eve Story has generated much controversy over predictions of an upcoming pole shift (aka crustal displacement) and catastrophic events that may sweep the planet in the not distant future. The 57-page document is based on a book authored by Chan Thomas in 1963. In it, Thomas proposed a pole shift scenario that differed in significant ways with what Charles Hapgood had earlier proposed in his pioneering 1958 book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust.

Hapgood’s theory, which was endorsed at the time by Albert Einstein, proposed that the geophysical poles periodically move by as much as up to 40 degrees through crustal displacements. This phenomenon was brought about by the increasing weight of the polar ice caps which accumulate more and more ice over the millennia until they eventually generate sufficient centrifugal force due to the planet’s rotation, to make the crust move over the mantle as Einstein explained in the book’s foreword.

In The Adam and Eve Story, Chan proposed that the pole shift was much greater, as much as 90 degrees with the poles shifting into the equatorial zone in less than a day. Chan has proposed the poles would flip back and forth in this way so that Antarctica would eventually return to the South Pole region, and the Arctic would do likewise.

Each time the geographical poles did one of these 90 degree flips, there would be catastrophic winds and tidal waves all over the planet, especially in the equatorial region where the Earth’s spin was  1000 mph. Water and wind would continue to move in the westerly direction through the law of inertia, sweeping over the landmasses that traveled over the equatorial region during the shift as Thomas explained:

In ¼ to ½ a day the poles move almost to the equator, and all hell lets loose. The atmosphere and oceans don’t shift with the shell – they just keep on rotating West to East – and at the equator that speed is 1000 miles per hour. It has to be, normally, to make one rotation per day. So, while the shell shifts with the poles going toward the equator, the winds and oceans go eastward, blowing across the face of the earth with supersonic speeds, inundating continents with water miles deep….

You can see, then,  that ice ages are not a matter of advancing and retreating ice; it’s simply that different areas of the Earth are in polar regions at different times, for different durations of time, with the changes between positions taking place in a fraction of a day. [The Adam and Eve Story, pp.13-14]

The following video illustrates what happens during one of these 90 degree shifts, and what Thomas was proposing for what’s to come. One can easily see how devastating such a 90 degree shift could be and why the CIA may have been motivated to suppress such information.

According to Ben Davidson, author of the popular Earth Catastrophe series, this flipping back and forth would address paleomagnetic studies that show that the magnetic poles have been in their present locations for millions of years. Davidson concluded that this made Thomas’ pole shift theory much more compelling than Hapgood’s. In fact, Davidson believed Hapgood was putting out his theory as a “limited hangout” by the CIA in order to put the truth out in a way that later could be easily discredited.

Unfortunately for Davidson, ice core samples from Antarctica clearly support Hapgood and not Thomas’ theory. Ice core samples from East Antarctica date back as much as 1.5 million years. The following diagram illustrates ice core samples taken from different Antarctic regions and show how far back in time the ice sheets date.

Figure 1. Antarctic ice core drill sites with depth and record duration. From the US ITASE project.

The results from the ice core drill sites show that East Antarctica has been covered by ice for hundreds of thousands years, with Lake Vostok having some of the oldest discovered ice (220,000 years). Older ice core samples than those recorded in the above map have subsequently been found both at Lake Vostok (400,000 years), and the Dome C area (800,000 years) as shown in NOAA records.

A subsequent 2013 study asserted that ice core samples of up to 1.5 million years are most likely to be found in the Dome C area of East Antarctica. Put simply, scientists agree that East Antarctica has been covered by ice sheets for at least 1.5 million years, and likely much longer than that.

In contrast, the ice core samples in West Antarctica are only a few centuries old, with only one so far matching the age of many of the East Antarctic sites. This site is in the drilling area designated Boyd whose ice was found to be 70,000 years old as the above map illustrates.

The ice core records show conclusively that much of the Antarctic continent has been located in the polar zone (latitudes greater than 66 degrees) for at least 1.5 million years, and not in the equatorial zone (O-23 degrees latitude) as proposed by Thomas. Hapgood’s theory offers a better explanation for why only part of Antarctica has been ice-free for significant periods. But how do we explain the 70,000 year old ice sample found in the Byrd region of West Antarctica?

To find a definitive answer to where the geographical poles have been located and then move via crustal displacements to new positions, preserving some but not all the ice accumulated before the displacement, we can turn to the work of Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, authors of When the Sky Fell.

In their well-documented book, they used a range of archeological and fossil records to show where ice sheets have been found over the last 100,000 years, and how these positions had changed due to crustal displacements as first proposed by Hapgood. To date, I have found no other authors laying out such a compelling case for using available scientific data to track the respective positions of the geographic poles during the last 100,000 years.

Their findings provide a clear explanation for the varying ages found in the ice core samples extracted from different regions of Antarctica; and why Hapgood, rather than Thomas, provides a more accurate explanation for how the crustal displacement theory works.

First, I begin with Flem-Aths’ illustration of the positions of the North and South poles prior to 91,600 BC. It shows how the bulk of East Antarctica was inside the Antarctic circle, while West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone – similar to the present day location of New Zealand. Note the South Pole was located just off the coast of East Antarctica at the time, while the North Pole was located in Alaska.

Importantly, the Dome C area containing some of the oldest ice core samples found to date was located within the Antarctic circle, thereby preserving much of the ancient ice sheets acquired over the previous 1.5 million years or more.

Figure 2. p. 83 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

 

The next diagram shows the Antarctic continent in relation to the South Pole after a crustal displacement led to a pole shift around 91,600 BC. Consequently, during the period from 91,600 BC to 50,600 BC, much of lower region of West Antarctica, along with the Transantarctic mountains, lay within the Antarctic circle, while the Palmer peninsula and significant areas of East Antarctica lay within the temperate zone.

Once again the physical South Pole was located over the ocean, rather than the Antarctic continent – this time off the coast of West Antarctica – adjacent to the Ross Sea. The geophysical pole had moved approximately 40 degrees from off the coast of East Antarctica to just off the West Antarctic coast during the 91,600 BC pole shift.

This is very close to what Hapgood had proposed was the crustal displacement that would occur during a pole shift.  Significantly, it is far less than the 90 degree pole shift claimed by Thomas.

Importantly the Dome C area remained entirely within the Antarctic circle thereby preserving its ancient ice sheet. Furthermore, the Byrd area where the 70,000 year old ice sample was found, had been moved from its prior location in the temperate zone prior to the 91,600 BC pole shift, to deep inside the Antarctic circle. This allowed the accumulation of ice to begin, thereby accounting for its estimated age.

Figure 3. p. 84 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

The next pole shift occurred around 50,600 BC, and an illustration provided by the Flem-Aths shows the approximate locations of the poles from 50,600 BC to 9,600 BC.

Around 50,600 BC, the South Pole has flipped back to the other side of the Antarctic continent, where it again lay just off the coast of East Antarctica. An approximate 30 degree pole shift had occurred, which is again consistent with Hapgood’s estimate for the cyclic crustal displacements that the Earth undergoes. It’s important to emphasize that the 50,600 BC pole shift was far less than the 90 degree shift predicted in Thomas’ theory.

Most of East Antarctica was again located inside the Antarctic circle, both preserving its ancient ice sheets and allowing them to expand. The Byrd region, containing the 70,000 year old ice core sample, was now located just outside the Antarctic Circle. Its marginal position marginally inside the temperate zone, which would allow the Byrd region to preserve the bulk of its ice sheets similar to the glaciers of southern New Zealand.

Figure 4. p. 85 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

The period from 50,600 BC to 9600 BC is significant since it corresponds to the last time major portions of the Antarctic continent lay outside the polar circle. The bulk of West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone, and its coastal area would therefore have been ice free. Significantly, West Antarctica’s coastline and interior would have been navigable, just as the 1513 Piri Reis Map showed.

In the following diagram, the Piri Reis map is superimposed over a map of the globe showing how the Antarctic coastline from the tip of the Palmer Peninsula, all the way down its eastern flank to East Antarctica was known to ancient sea captains.

Fig 5. Piri Reis Map superimposed over map of the globe

Also vital to understand is that this period, 50,600 BC to 9600 BC corresponds to the Atlantean civilization that Plato wrote about in his famous dialogues, Critias and Timaeus. Plato explained Atlantis’ extensive island system and waterways deep into its interior, and how it was the hub for a mighty empire that ruled over much of Africa, Europe, and Asia.

This finally takes us to the 9600 BC pole shift that led to the entire Antarctic continent, being moved to wholly inside the Antarctic circle. The magnitude of the Earth crustal displacement moving the South Pole from its previous location just off the East Antarctic coast to its present location was approximately 20 degrees. Again, significantly less than what Thomas was proposing in his crustal displacement theory.

The Flem-Aths contend that Atlantis was located in Antarctica and that the remnants of this legendary lost civilization today lie under the West Antarctic ice sheets. This is consistent with what several whistleblowers and insiders have been revealing concerning the discovery of a flash-frozen civilization under the ice sheets.

If the Flem-Aths and others are right that Plato’s Atlantis is buried under the Antarctic ice, this gives us a means of estimating the devastation that would be caused by a crustal displacement of approximately 20 degrees. It would be sufficient to wipe out the coastal regions all over the globe such as the low-lying archipelagos such as Atlantis, but allow those living in elevated or mountainous regions to survive the subsequent tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes accompanying a pole shift.

When ice core samples are examined in relation to what we know about Earth crustal displacement theories proposed by Hapgood and Thomas, they lead to a clear conclusion. The examination of ice core samples from different parts of Antarctica support Hapgood’s theory that earth crustal displacements happen periodically, and involve Pole Shifts of up to 40 degrees.

The Flem Aths book, When the Sky Fell, gives us a means of tracking the most significant pole shifts over the last 100,000 thousand years, and illustrates how these have occurred in a manner that is consistent with what ice core samples tell us.

Thomas’ theory that the Earth regularly experiences 90 degree pole shifts that flip the poles back and forth from equatorial regions is not supported by Antarctic ice core records. While it is comforting to know that the Earth is unlikely to experience anything like the cataclysmic 90 degree pole shift predicted by Thomas, it is sobering to know that even a 20 degree pole shift devastated the worldwide Atlantean civilization 11,600 years ago.

The likelihood that we will soon experience a pole shift due to another crustal displacement caused by solar activity, cosmic rays, collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field, activity from the Earth’s core, and/or a rapid melt off of the West Antarctic, appears to be quite high as I have suggested in previous articles examining Davidson’s Earth Catastrophe series.

This calls for an unprecedented level of transparency by governments in sharing data about Antarctica’s history, what is known about prior pole shifts, and the disclosure of suppressed technologies that would enable the bulk to humanity to prepare and escape from impending cataclysmic events.

© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice

Further Reading

Massive Pole Shifts are Cyclic according to Declassified CIA Document

Ben Davidson, founder of Space Weather News, began his six part Earth Catastrophe Cycle video series by discussing a 57 page booklet called “The Adam and Eve Story” authored by “Chan Thomas”, which was classified by the CIA at some point after its 1963 publication, and declassified in part on June 24, 2013 with the release of a sanitized digital version on the CIA’s website. Thomas’ analysis of cyclic pole shifts was different in key respects to what was being proposed at the time by Charles Hapgood in his seminal book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust (1958).

According to Davidson, it was Thomas more accurate explanation for how a pole shift happens, which led to the CIA classifying Thomas’ book.  The Adam and Eve Story was first published in 1963 by Emerson House, with a third edition published in 1965, and then republished by Bengal Tiger Press in 1993. It is not clear when, why and how the CIA classified Thomas book, but the fact that the CIA chose to release a declassified sanitized version in 2013 is very significant.

In part 1 of his video series, Davidson contrasts Hapgood’s wandering pole hypothesis with the pole shift described in the CIA suppressed book by Thomas. Hapgood wrote of a pole shift of up to 40 degrees that could recur every 5000 years or so in The Earth’s Shifting Crust where earlier geographical poles would wander on the Earth’s surface with each crustal displacement.

Instead, Thomas wrote of a massive shift of almost 90 degrees  that would move both poles into the tropics in less than a day, and then back to their earlier polar positions after the next cycle:

In ¼ to ½ a day the poles move almost to the equator, and all hell lets loose. The atmosphere and oceans don’t shift with the shell – they just keep on rotating West to East – and at the equator that speed is 1000 miles per hour. It has to be, normally, to make one rotation per day. So, while the shell shifts with the poles going toward the equator, the winds and oceans go eastward, blowing across the face of the earth with supersonic speeds, inundating continents with water miles deep….

You can see, then,  that ice ages are not a matter of advancing and retreating ice; it’s simply that different areas of the Earth are in polar regions at different times, for different durations of time, with the changes between positions taking place in a fraction of a day. [The Adam and Eve Story, pp.13-14]

Thomas provided a table illustrating how the North pole, for example, would switch back and forth between northern hemisphere regions after experiencing close to a 90 degree tilt.

The Adam and Eve Story, p. 17.

It is Thomas’ conclusion of cyclic pole shifts of almost 90 degrees that flip the poles back and forth over millennia that Davidson identified as the key reason the CIA classified Thomas’ work. If the North and South poles flipped back and forth 90 degrees, there would be little evidence of previous pole shifts since these would be buried under thick layers of ice.

This takes us to the science of paleomagnetics – the study of the record of the Earth’s magnetic field in rocks, minerals or archeological materials – which has been used to determine the historic movement of the Earth’s magnetic poles.

Davidson cited a number of scholarly articles which studied paleomagnetic data from volcanic hotspots. A highly regarded 1985 paleomagnetic study titled, “True polar wander: An analysis of Cenozoic and Mesozoic paleomagnetic poles” found “the pole has moved 22 deg + or 10 deg in the past 180 m.y.[million years].” This was far less than the 40 degree wandering pole hypothesis that Hapgood proposed in an approximate 5000 year period.

A subsequent 2001 study titled  “Stability of the Earth with respect to the spin axis for the last 130 million years” concluded that “the time-averaged position of the spin axis has deviated by no more than ˜5° over the last 130 million yr, indicating that mantle mass heterogeneities have not changed rapidly enough to drive TPW [True Polar Wander].” Davidson cited these and a 2018 study as the key elements of the body of scientific evidence refuting Hapgood’s wandering pole hypothesis.

However, as Davidson pointed out, the scientific data from paleomagnetic studies did not address Thomas’ theory of the poles flipping back and forth over geologic time, thereby giving the appearance that the poles had not moved over millions of years as researchers had mistakenly concluded:

All work crushing the theory utilizes these flawed studies, especially the long term average pole position and none address the problem of a ping pong shift where you would have that time average pole position appearing to be in the same position over millions of years.

Davidson goes as far as suggesting that Hapgood, who worked for the CIA’s predecessor the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, conducted a “limited hangout” with his 1958 book to get some of the truth out into the public arena, but doing so in a way that could be eventually discredited.

Davidson cited a 1994 book titled World in Peril about the once classified information provided by an Arctic polar explorer, Major Maynard White, who told his son, Ken (the book’s author), about secret Pentagon meetings in 1948 where suppression of evidence of cyclic pole shifts was discussed:

At one of the scientific meetings that Major White attended in the Pentagon in early 1948, the scientists discussed the advisability of alerting the public to the pending polar-flip phenomenon. None of the scientist would agree to withhold the information from the public, but, on the other hand, neither could they agree on how to release it. The knowledge of this phenomenon, some felt, could in itself destroy the moral fiber of society. Their fears were apparently unfounded when, in the early 1950s, information about the flip phenomenon was released in both a newspaper column and a magazine article, but surprisingly generated no responses from an apparently stunned parochial or incredulous public.

Given the amount of scientific data presented by Davidson in his Earth Catastrophe Cycle series, it’s clear that physical pole shifts of approximately 90 degrees have been historically recorded, and that this became known to government authorities as early as 1948.

This takes us to the critical question: “What is the trigger for a geophysical pole shift?”

Hapgood, along with Albert Einstein, who wrote the preface to Hapgood’s 1958 book, believed that the accumulation of ice at the North and South poles would be the trigger for a crustal displacement (geophysical pole shift). Einstein explained the triggering mechanism as follows:

In a polar region there is continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically distributed about the pole. The earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the earth’s crust over the rest of the earth’s body, and this will displace the polar regions toward the equator.

Davidson asserts in part 1 of his series that Einstein eventually broke with Hapgood when he realized that the amount of ice at the poles would be insufficient to trigger a crustal displacement as he had earlier concluded from Hapgood’s data.

In contrast to Hapgood, Thomas believed the explanation was that something in the Earth’s interior was occurring that was the triggering mechanism. Thomas wrote:

… once every few thousand years neutral matter escapes from the 860-mile [1385 km] radius inner core into the 1300-mile [2092 km] thick molten outer core, and there is a literal atomic explosion inside the Earth. The explosion in the high energy layer of the outer core disrupts completely the electrical and magnetic structure in both the molten outer core and the outer 60-mile thick molten layer. Finally, the ice caps are allowed to pull the shell of the earth around the interior, with the shallow molten layers lubricating the shift all the way. [The Adam and Eve Story, p.14]

Thomas likens the “neutral matter” escaping Earth’s inner core to the plasma in a solar burst since these are based on what he claimed was the same governing universal principle found in the atom and galaxies. Consequently, Thomas is suggesting that the triggering mechanism for the sun emitting a solar flash or micronova, is similar to what triggers the Earth’s inner core to release waves of energy that ultimately shift both the magnetic and physical poles by as much as 90 degrees, in a cyclic pattern.

In World in Peril, the triggering mechanism is described as a flip in the Earth’s magnetic field as cited by Davidson:

It was determined through repeated experimentation that as the “magnetic pole approached the “geographic pole, the “magnetic” pole would at some point accelerate its rate of convergence as though pulled toward the “geographic” pole by centripetal force and jump to coincide; but instead of the poles coinciding, the “magnetic” pole would rapidly “flip” around the “geographic” pole, them spin off towards the equator as though by centrifugal force, ending up at a position where the two axes assumed an approximate 89-degree divergence. After this polar “flip” occurred, the axes would then gradually begin to reconverge over a long period of time.

According to the classified information received by Major White and his USAF Arctic reconnaissance unit, the magnetic pole flip would be the trigger for a crustal displacement leading to an almost 90 degree geophysical pole shift, as explained in the description to the World in Peril:

World in Peril … provides an explanation, based on the unit’s findings, of how Pentagon scientists determined our globe has evolved in prehistory, and how another earth-reshaping cataclysm is imminent!  Now we can understand why mammoths and mastodons found in the arctic permafrost had been instantaneously frozen with subtropical vegetation in their mouths and stomachs.  World in Peril may be the only book in print that accurately explains the elusive triggering mechanism for the phenomena known to scientists for over 200 years as “crustal shift,” and what it implies.

It’s important to emphasize the complementary nature of the triggering mechanisms found in Thomas’ The Adam and Eve Story and White’s information in World in Peril.

White essentially described an internal geological process by which a magnetic pole flip would lead to a crustal displacement so the two sets of poles (magnetic and geophysical) would briefly realign at opposite ends of the equator. The magnetic poles would then gradually realign with the new geophysical North and South poles until the cycle repeated itself with the former geophysical poles flipping back to their former positions.

Some unknown event inside the Earth would trigger both the magnetic pole flip and the crustal displacement according to the information acquired by White, and had been suppressed by national security officials.

Thomas’ book explains the internal mechanism which triggers the pole shifts. The neutral matter he described is basically the functional equivalent of a micronova or solar flare being emitted by the Earth’s inner core. Consequently, any evidence of the Earth’s interior generating something analogous to increased solar activity is an important clue to a pole shift occurring in the near future.

Davidson’s six part series makes a cogent case for a connection between cyclic micronovas and historic pole shifts of almost 90 degrees, which occur in a back and forth flipping action making it appear that the present poles have been in their respective positions for millions of years, as paleomagnetic studies have mistakenly concluded.

Furthermore, his emphasis on the information proposed by Thomas and White as crustal displacement being triggered by internal geological events, rather than external events such as accumulation of ice at the poles, leads to a correct focus on something happening inside Earth’s molten core.

The historic data and analyses presented by Davidson point to something simultaneously triggering eruptions of “neutral matter” from the inner Earth core, and from the sun in the form of micronovas. This takes us finally to the role played by cosmic rays as the elusive trigger mechanism, and recent scientific data showing these recently emerging out of Antarctica and a possible connection to mysterious global seismic waves.

To be continued. For Part 1, click here

© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice

Further Reading

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