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The Path of the Pole
Hapgood's tour de force is back in print! This riveting account of how earth's poles have flipped positions many times is the culmination of Hapgood's extensive research of Antarctica, ancient maps and the geological record. This amazing book discusses the various pole shifts in earth's history -- occurring when earth's crust slips in the inner core -- and gives evidence for each one. It also predicts future pole shifts: a planetary alignment will cause the next one on 5 May 2000! Packed with illustrations, this book is the reference other books on the subject cite over and over again. With millennium madness in full swing, this is just the book to generate even more excitement at the unknown possibilities.
437 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
40 people are currently reading
349 people want to read
About the author
Charles H. Hapgood
18 books45 followersCharles Hutchins Hapgood was an American college professor and author who became one of the best known advocates of the pseudoarchaeological claim of a rapid and recent pole shift with catastrophic results.
(Wikipedia)
(Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 21, 2011
Path of the Pole is a pretty cool Theory involving anthropology, physics, and particularly geology. Charles Hapgood has dedicated his life to this science, My Pop and I had an argument when I was young about whether or not weight on the surface of planet could effect it's rotation. Hapgood makes it perfectly clear that it can influence Planet Earths rotation by weight distribution. He argues that our poles drift, the poles are invisible but can be measured. Illustrations, charts, diagrams, maps, and figures help explain his difficult concepts and makes his theories easy to understand. I recommend this book if you're studying what causes continental drift, shifts in earth's tectonic plates, ice ages to come and go, species to appear on different continents, if you study what causes volcanoes, and most importantly....... what the future of planet earth is. READ IT!
August 5, 2018
I read this many years ago and was highly impressed; it led me on a journey of research that contributed to my becoming on author of books on topics I am very interested in - most recently - POLE SHIFT: Evidence Will Not Be Silenced. Hapgood wrote several excellent books on the subject and is the unofficial godfather of early pole shift research. He gathered evidence from many fields of science and proved beyond a reasonable doubt that pole shifts occur. I wish he had not been (executed?) accidentally killed in 1982 when he was about to publish another book with new and astounding controversial evidence... but I am convinced that much evidence is covered up. This is a must read for anyone interested in pole shifts.
June 3, 2012
An excellent book. The science is backed by none other than Einstein. And Hapgood asks questions of history as we know it. Have pole shifts led to catastrophic events, such as Ice ages, earthquakes and other phenomena. Evidence lies in the rocks, and Hapgood asks questions in a well thought out manner. Could ice indeed cause rotation of the lithosphere?
Also reference is made to ancient sea maps, showing Antarctica, Ice-free! Read it for yourself. Compelling.
Also reference is made to ancient sea maps, showing Antarctica, Ice-free! Read it for yourself. Compelling.
July 28, 2011
Very good.
July 10, 2017
solid presentation of the theory that approaches a contemporary iteration with more math and evidence.
December 6, 2025
Originally published in the '50s, revised in 1970, this is an extraordinary science book written by an historian, that is still in print:
https://www.amazon.com/Path-Pole-Char...
But with the following significant caveat:
"Hapgood served in military intelligence, working for the Center of Information, later renamed the OSS .... Hapgood was out of government service by 1945"[1]
There are some who say Hapgood's theory is deliberately blunted, and perhaps some evidence distorted, as part of an intelligence narrative. On the other hand, this book was actually something of a collaborative effort, with multiple scientists contributing in various ways, including Albert Einstein who wrote a foreward.
But even if you actually firmly believe the CIA poisoning idea, there is much to be gotten out of this book. His theory does have very broad explanatory power for many aspects of geology that are wholly or partially mysterious (Ice Ages, mountain building, the repeated sinking and rising from the sea of vast swathes of land surface, etc).
In a nutshell, Hapgood's thesis is that once every ~50k years, the geographic poles move significantly via a shift of the crust, while interior regions from the mantle downward do not move. He feels he has identified the last three candidate locations before the present:
* near the Hudson's Bay in N.E. Canada most recently; before that
* in the ocean between Norway and Greenland; and before that
* in the area of southern Alaska / northern British Columbia.
And thus his explanation of Ice Ages: there is no such thing. As the ice melts at the last location of the poles, it accumulates at the latest. This is really quite a compelling idea, although he himself identified a serious counter-factual: the flash freezing of large mammoths in Siberia when that location was supposed to be warming. And he comes to these dates and locations somewhat fuzzily (for my quick read of the book) via carbon-14-dated physical evidence.
Then there is the brilliant insight that, since the Earth is an oblate sphere flattened at the poles and bulging a bit at the equator, an equatorial land mass moving toward the pole will experience compression as it is squeezed into a smaller area, resulting in uplifting and massive mountain-building. Whereas a polar region moving towards the equator with be stretched out, fractured, and subject to subsidence, perhaps sinking beneath the ocean.
To this day there is no satisfying explanation for these multiple facts of our geological past, yet here we have one theory that wraps these and others into one neat package.
He suggests, without evidence as far as I can tell, that these shifts typically take thousands of years and therefore are relatively painless in any given lifetime. He and his collaborators did some math to explain how a shift might be initiated, but I saw nothing there that mandated the speed of the shift. To put a number on this is pure hand-waving.
The bibliography is a list of hundreds, and footnotes are scattered through every page. But nonetheless this book is quite an effortless read, even a page-turner in some places. I plowed right through it.
Do I believe it all? Not quite yet. I have read skepticism elsewhere, one point of which hit home: what about Iceland, (supposedly) sitting immovably on top of a rare mantle plume for millions of years? Is it impossible that Iceland has moved? I am reading a book on the geology of Iceland as I write. I am also in the rare position of needing to read this book at a leisurely pace again, with a more critical eye.
[1] http://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/cha...
https://www.amazon.com/Path-Pole-Char...
But with the following significant caveat:
"Hapgood served in military intelligence, working for the Center of Information, later renamed the OSS .... Hapgood was out of government service by 1945"[1]
There are some who say Hapgood's theory is deliberately blunted, and perhaps some evidence distorted, as part of an intelligence narrative. On the other hand, this book was actually something of a collaborative effort, with multiple scientists contributing in various ways, including Albert Einstein who wrote a foreward.
But even if you actually firmly believe the CIA poisoning idea, there is much to be gotten out of this book. His theory does have very broad explanatory power for many aspects of geology that are wholly or partially mysterious (Ice Ages, mountain building, the repeated sinking and rising from the sea of vast swathes of land surface, etc).
In a nutshell, Hapgood's thesis is that once every ~50k years, the geographic poles move significantly via a shift of the crust, while interior regions from the mantle downward do not move. He feels he has identified the last three candidate locations before the present:
* near the Hudson's Bay in N.E. Canada most recently; before that
* in the ocean between Norway and Greenland; and before that
* in the area of southern Alaska / northern British Columbia.
And thus his explanation of Ice Ages: there is no such thing. As the ice melts at the last location of the poles, it accumulates at the latest. This is really quite a compelling idea, although he himself identified a serious counter-factual: the flash freezing of large mammoths in Siberia when that location was supposed to be warming. And he comes to these dates and locations somewhat fuzzily (for my quick read of the book) via carbon-14-dated physical evidence.
Then there is the brilliant insight that, since the Earth is an oblate sphere flattened at the poles and bulging a bit at the equator, an equatorial land mass moving toward the pole will experience compression as it is squeezed into a smaller area, resulting in uplifting and massive mountain-building. Whereas a polar region moving towards the equator with be stretched out, fractured, and subject to subsidence, perhaps sinking beneath the ocean.
To this day there is no satisfying explanation for these multiple facts of our geological past, yet here we have one theory that wraps these and others into one neat package.
He suggests, without evidence as far as I can tell, that these shifts typically take thousands of years and therefore are relatively painless in any given lifetime. He and his collaborators did some math to explain how a shift might be initiated, but I saw nothing there that mandated the speed of the shift. To put a number on this is pure hand-waving.
The bibliography is a list of hundreds, and footnotes are scattered through every page. But nonetheless this book is quite an effortless read, even a page-turner in some places. I plowed right through it.
Do I believe it all? Not quite yet. I have read skepticism elsewhere, one point of which hit home: what about Iceland, (supposedly) sitting immovably on top of a rare mantle plume for millions of years? Is it impossible that Iceland has moved? I am reading a book on the geology of Iceland as I write. I am also in the rare position of needing to read this book at a leisurely pace again, with a more critical eye.
[1] http://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/cha...
April 26, 2023
what the “experts “ say
It disturbs me that it is called “pseudoscience “ by some presumed experts. Generally, when I look at theories, there are a few things that lead to credibility (for me): (1) reliable and confirmable sources for referenced facts; (2) logic that connects facts to conclusions utilizing standard methods, in particular, I am looking for things like diagrams (causality and effects) and quantification, measurements, etc.; and (3) falsify-ability. I am not, at this stage, equipped to cross reference the sources or audit the math; however, I will say that anyone who calls it pseudoscience should be able to separately attack the credibility on the basis of conflict with the above credibility criteria. Noting both that Hapgoood does explain his basis and quantitative analysis, and that Hapgood does provide areas for further research (including falsify ability criteria) the proponents of other theories, such as continental drift should be able to answer the issues with something more than ridicule and “consensus “.
It disturbs me that it is called “pseudoscience “ by some presumed experts. Generally, when I look at theories, there are a few things that lead to credibility (for me): (1) reliable and confirmable sources for referenced facts; (2) logic that connects facts to conclusions utilizing standard methods, in particular, I am looking for things like diagrams (causality and effects) and quantification, measurements, etc.; and (3) falsify-ability. I am not, at this stage, equipped to cross reference the sources or audit the math; however, I will say that anyone who calls it pseudoscience should be able to separately attack the credibility on the basis of conflict with the above credibility criteria. Noting both that Hapgoood does explain his basis and quantitative analysis, and that Hapgood does provide areas for further research (including falsify ability criteria) the proponents of other theories, such as continental drift should be able to answer the issues with something more than ridicule and “consensus “.
April 23, 2022
Sensibility
This book is a very good starting point for an explanation if ice ages. It is also enlightening in that the author highlights how little of our theories of the earths processes are based in fact and how little we know. There doesn't seem to be a single theory that comes anywhere near becoming fact. Vast amounts of data need to be created to sort all of this out.
This book is a very good starting point for an explanation if ice ages. It is also enlightening in that the author highlights how little of our theories of the earths processes are based in fact and how little we know. There doesn't seem to be a single theory that comes anywhere near becoming fact. Vast amounts of data need to be created to sort all of this out.
November 8, 2022
Very interesting theory
If I had read this when I was a young man I might have taken a completely different path in life. Now I need to know if more has been done to prove this theory.
If I had read this when I was a young man I might have taken a completely different path in life. Now I need to know if more has been done to prove this theory.
March 20, 2020
Easy to understand hypothesis of pole shifts, the effect of such a pole shift and the resulting evidence. Interesting and definitely provides food for thought.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews