Charles H. Hapgood


The Path of the Pole is now available in paperback, as is Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. You can order from or Barnes and Noble or directly from the publisher, Adventures Unlimited Press, in Illinois. You can call 815-253-6390 or go to We suggest going directly to the publisher's website so you can see all the other interesting books they publish, including their magazine, World Explorer Club
Charles H. Hapgood was a history professor who began, at the prompting of some students, to look into the search for the lost continent of Atlantis. That lead him to the ideas of Hugh Achincloss Brown: that the entire earth could be made to be repositioned at a radically new angle on its axis of rotation.

Hapgood realized that the entire planet did not have to be repositioned around its axis. Only the outer crust need move, just as the loosely peeled skin of an orange could be slid around the unmoved inner slices. This line of thinking was published in Earth's Shifting Crust (1958), in collaboration with James H. Campbell, a mathematician-engineer.

Hapgood ultimately revised key parts of his thinking because his calculations convinced him that the mass of the ice cap on Antartica could not destabilize the earth's rotation.

Hapgood's thinking is expressed most clearly by Hapgood himself

That book was later revised and in 1970 republished as The Path of the Pole by Chilton. In an introductory note, Hapgood said:

"Polar wandering is based on the idea that the outer shell of the earth shifts about from time to time, moving some continents toward and other continents away from the poles. Continental drift is based on the idea that the continents move individually...A few writers have suggested that perhaps continental drift causes polar wandering. This book advances the notion that polar wandering is primary and causes the displacement of continents....This book will present evidence that the last shift of the earth's crust (the lithosphere) took place in recent time, at the close of the last ice age, and that it was the cause of the improvement in climate."

Hapgood then goes on to mention to two areas where he finds much of his evidence, in data derived from studies of geomagnetism and from carbon 14 dating.

Although he argued that such global disruptions happened repeatedly, Hapgood by then was rejecting the idea that such disruptions could happen quickly.


The presence of a truly liquid layer between the core and the outer crust would allow such slippage, moderated by inertial forces.

Using geomagnetic and carbon dating evidence, he identified the locations of the pole and its paths as:

Position # 1 -- 63 degrees N, 135 degrees W ( the Yukon area)

Position # 2 -- 72 degrees N, 10 degrees E (in the Greenland Sea)

Position # 3 -- 60 degrees N, 73 degrees W (the Hudson Bar area)

Position # 4 -- the current position

For pictures of these positions, go to
Pole Paths

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