Replies

me, from an defunct forum:

April 25, 2000 21:15:47 EDT -- The Hapgood, Hancock, and Flem-Ath ideas about the various medieval maps of Antarctica are gently and cogently refuted by Robert Schoch in his Voices of the Rocks (p 105-106 in particular, but the entire discussion begins a few pages earlier and is well worth reading).

July 31, 2000 17:40:48 EDT -- Regarding Hapgood -- I don't accept his interpretation of the old maps. Clearly those are based on copies of ancient originals, but often do not show what he claimed. The coastlines of all the continents were different before and during the most recent global glaciation. Maps made by purported, very ancient mapmaking civilizations would not show conditions remarkably similar to those of today. Robert Schoch's explanation of the apparent ice-free Antarctica in those maps makes more sense to me despite my catastrophist orientation.

August 17, 2000 20:19:11 EDT -- One reason gradual change doesn't explain glaciation is the lack of intermediate shorelines. The low point of the sealevel is attested by the "fossil" shoreline, but no intervening higher level is found in now submerged areas. This indicates that sealevel fell too quickly -- and rose again too quickly -- to leave traces of the intermediate locations. This alone dispenses with Hapgood's 2,000 years or so of crustal displacement, but the Flem-Aths have discarded that detail in favor of a very rapid crustal displacement. The Flem-Aths are stuck, however, because of the hemispheric discrepancy which can't be explained by pole shift. Antarctica is isolated by water, but the southern hemisphere is also cooler today due to the presence of the Antarctic icecap (at least that's the conventional reason -- Milankovitch would disagree).