Page 448 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Antarctica is our least understood continent [wrote the Flem-Aths in their outline].
Most of us assume that this immense island has been ice-bound for millions of
years. But new discoveries prove that parts of Antarctica were free of ice
thousands of years ago, recent history by the geological clock. The theory of
‘earth-crust displacement’ explains the mysterious surge and ebb of Antarctica’s
vast ice sheet.

What the Canadian researchers were referring to was Hapgood’s
suggestion that until the end of the last Ice Age—say the eleventh
millennium BC—the landmass of Antarctica had been positioned some
2000 miles further north (at a congenial and temperate latitude) and that
it had been moved to its present position inside the Antarctic Circle as a
result of a massive displacement of the earth’s crust. This displacement,
4
the Flem-Aths continued, had

also left other evidence of its deadly visit in a ring of death around the globe. All
the continents that experienced rapid and massive extinctions of animal species
(notably the Americas and Siberia) underwent a massive change in their latitudes
...

The consequences of a displacement are monumental. The earth’s crust ripples
over its interior and the world is shaken by incredible quakes and floods. The sky
appears to fall as continents groan and shift position. Deep in the ocean,
earthquakes generate massive tidal waves which crash against coastlines, flooding
them. Some lands shift to warmer climes, while others, propelled into polar zones,
suffer the direst of winters. Melting ice caps raise the ocean’s level higher and
higher. All living things must adapt, migrate or die ...

If the horror of an earth-crust displacement were to be visited upon today’s
interdependent world the progress of thousands of years of civilization would be
torn away from our planet like a fine cobweb. Those who live near high mountains
might escape the global tidal waves, but they would be forced to leave behind, in
the lowlands, the slowly constructed fruits of civilization. Only among the
merchant marine and navies of the world might some evidence of civilization
remain. The rusting hulls of ships and submarines would eventually perish but the
valuable maps that are housed in them would be saved by survivors, perhaps for
hundreds, even thousands of years. Until once again mankind could use them to
sail the World Ocean in search of lost lands ...
As I read these words I remembered Charles Hapgood’s account of how
the layer of the earth that geologists call the lithosphere—the thin but
rigid outer crust of the planet—could at times be displaced, moving in
one piece ‘over the soft inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if it
were loose, might shift over the inner part of the orange all in one piece.’
5
Thus far, I felt I was on familiar ground. But then the Canadian
researchers made two vital connections which I had missed.

4 See Part I.
5 Ibid.

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