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Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1904 – 1982) a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was born in New York City. After graduating, Hapgood travelled to Germany where his studies at the University of Freiburg coincided with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. When the Second World War erupted, he returned to the United States and joined the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) as a civilian with inside knowledge of Nazi Germany. After the war, Hapgood became a professor of anthropology and the history of science at Keene State College in New Hampshire. In the early 1950s he began formulating his theory of earth crust displacement, a project that would occupy him for nearly twenty years.

Einstein’s correspondence with Hapgood began in November 1952 and lasted until Einstein’s death in April 1955. Einstein wrote at least ten letters to Hapgood and conducted scientific correspondence with other interested parties about Hapgood’s theory. In 1954 Einstein approached the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in support of Hapgood’s application. Einstein wrote that Hapgood’s idea of earth crust displacement was

“fascinating”

“justified”

“promising”

and

“important”.

He recommended Hapgood as one who had the “energy and patience” to pursue the theory.

Despite the support of one of the greatest minds of the 20^th century Hapgood did not receive a fellowship.

One of Hapgood’s most rewarding experiences came in January 1955 when he and his friend, and co-theorist, James Hunter Campbell met with Einstein. Hapgood explained that his own contribution lay mainly in the fields of geology and paleontology.  He left to Campbell the issues of mechanics and geophysics. The conversation ranged over a number of topics, from the “elastic limit of the crustal rocks” to the value of the new tool of radio-carbon dating. As the men were about to leave, Einstein offered two pieces of advice:

1. He said that it was not “necessary to take the present state of knowledge very seriously” adding “what we regard as knowledge today may someday be regarded as error.”
2. And the “gradualist notions common in geology were … merely a habit of mind, and were not necessarily justified by the empirical data.”

Earlier, in May, 1954 Einstein had written a foreword to Hapgood’s book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science. Part of that quote reads:

A great many empirical data indicates that at each point of the earth’s surface that has been carefully studied, many climatic changes have taken place, apparently quite suddenly. This, according to Mr. Hapgood, is explicable if the virtually rigid outer crust of the earth undergoes, from time to time, extensive displacement…

To appreciate what an earth crust displacement is we need to have a basic understanding of the earth’s interior.

The bulk of the earth’s mass lies at its center and consists of an inner core of solid iron surrounded by an outer core of liquid iron. The outer core is encircled by the thickest part of the earth, a lower and upper mantle of solid rock.

Above the upper mantle lies the asthenosphere (red) or “weak zone”. It is the mobility of the asthenosphere that makes it possible for the earth’s lithosphere (crust – yellow) to shift.

The consequences of a crustal displacement are monumental. As the earth’s crust ripples over its interior, the world is shaken by incredible earthquakes and floods. The sky appears to fall. Of course, the sky remained in place. It was the crust that shifted. We still speak of “sunrises” and “sunsets” even though it is the earth’s spin that creates the illusion of movement.

During a displacement the sun would appear to rise and set over an altered horizon.  Until finally the crust grinds to a halt. Beneath the ocean, earthquakes generate massive tidal waves that crash against the coastlines, flooding them. Some lands are shifted to warmer climates.  Others, propelled into the polar zones, suffer the direst of winters.  Melting ice caps, released from the polar areas, raise the ocean’s level ever higher.

Above image:
Top: 11,600 years ago, before the earth’s crust shifted, the Arctic Circle encapsulated most of North America and Greenland.
Bottom: 11,600 years ago the Antarctic Circle covered about half of Antarctica. The former temperate areas of Antarctica [an area equal in size to Western Europe] may have been the site of the lost island continent of Atlantis.

Watch for the new edition of When the Sky Fell in 2012.