Charles Hapgood
Encyclopedia
Charles Hutchins Hapgood (May 17, 1904 – December 21, 1982) was an American
college professor and author who became one of the best known advocates of a pseudo-historical claim of a rapid and recent pole shift with catastrophic results.
from Harvard University
in 1929 in medieval and modern History
. His Ph.D. work on the French Revolution
was interrupted by the Great Depression
. He taught for a year in Vermont
and directed a community center in Provincetown, also serving as the executive secretary of Franklin Roosevelt's Crafts Commission.
During World War II
, Hapgood was employed by the Center of Information (which later became the Office of Strategic Services
and then the Central Intelligence Agency
) and the Red Cross, and also served as a liaison officer between the White House
and the Office of the Secretary of the War. After the war, Hapgood began a twenty-year teaching career in the humanities through faculty appointments at Keystone College
(1945–1947), Springfield College
(1947–1952), Keene State College
(1956–1966), and New England College
(1966–1967), where he lectured in world and American history, anthropology, economics, and the history of science.
Hapgood married Tamsin Hughes in 1941. They divorced in 1955. In later years he resided in Arizona
and Richmond, New Hampshire
. While living in Greenfield, Massachusetts
, he was struck by a car and died on December 21, 1982. He is survived by two sons, Frederick (born 1942) and William (born 1944), and two grandsons.
prompted a class project to investigate the lost continent of Atlantis
, leading Hapgood to investigate possible ways that massive earth changes could occur and exposing him to the literature of Hugh Auchincloss Brown
.
In 1958, Hapgood published The Earth's Shifting Crust which denied the existence of continental drift
and featured a foreword by Albert Einstein
. In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (1966) and The Path of the Pole (1970), Hapgood proposed the hypothesis that the Earth's axis has shifted numerous times during geological history. In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings he supported the suggestion made by Arlington Mallery that a part of the Piri Reis Map
was a depiction of the area of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land
. He used this to propose that a 15 degree pole shift occurred around 9,600 BCE (approx. 11,600 years ago) and that a part of the Antarctic was ice-free at that time, and that an ice-age civilization could have mapped the coast.
He concludes that "Antarctica was mapped when these parts were free of ice", taking that view that an Antarctic warm period coincided with the last ice age in the Northern hemisphere, and that the Piri Reis and other maps were based on "ancient" maps derived from ice-age originals. Later research concerning the paleoclimatology and ice sheets of Antarctica have completely discredited the interpretations by Hapgood that an Antarctic warm period coincided with the last ice age in the Northern hemisphere and any part of it had been ice-free at and prior to 9,600 BCE (approx. 11,600 years ago).
Hapgood also examined a 1531 map by French mathematician and cartographer Oronce Finé
(aka Oronteus Finaeus). In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, he reproduces letters received from the chief of a U.S. Air Force cartography section stationed at Westover AFB in 1961. At Hapgood's request, they had studied both Piri Reis and Oronce Finé maps during their off-duty hours, concluding that both were compiled from original source maps of Antarctica at a time when it was relatively free of ice, supporting Hapgood's findings. Hapgood concluded that advanced cartographic knowledge appears on the Piri Reis map and the Oronteus Finaeus map, and must be the result of some unknown and advanced ancient civilization that developed astronomy, navigational instruments, plane geometry and trigonometry, long before Greece or any other known civilization.
According to historians Paul Hoye and Paul Lunde, while Hapgood's work garnered some enthusiasm and praise for its thoroughness, his revolutionary hypotheses largely met with skepticism and were ignored by most scholars. In the book The Piri Reis Map of 1513 Gregory C. McIntosh examines Hapgood's claims for both maps and states that "they fall short of proving or even strongly suggesting that the Piri Reis map and the Fine map depict the actual outline of Antarctica."
Hapgood's unorthodox interpretations such as “Earth Crustal Displacement” were never accepted as valid competing scientific hypotheses, yet his ideas have found popularity in alternative circles. Librarians Rand and Rose Flem-Ath as well as journalist Graham Hancock
base portions of their works on Hapgood’s evidence for catastrophe at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum
. Hapgood's ideas also figure prominently in the 2009 sci-fi/disaster movie, "2012."
writes that Hapgood was convinced that they were authentic ancient artifacts which indicated that men and dinosaurs had cohabited together in the recent past, and that dinosaurs had not become extinct many millions of years ago.
and spirit communication, Hapgood spent a decade working with the New England
medium
Elwood Babbitt in attempts to make contact with notable figures from the past. Hapgood audiotaped and transcribed a number of Babbitt's "trance lectures" which purported to come from Jesus
, Albert Einstein
, Mark Twain
, and the Hindu god Vishnu
, using the material to publish his final three books:Voices of Spirit, Through the Psychic Experience of Elwood Babbitt (1975), Talks with Christ and His Teachers Through the Psychic Gift of Elwood Babbitt (1981), and The God Within: a Testament of Vishnu, a Handbook for the Spiritual Renaissance (1982).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
college professor and author who became one of the best known advocates of a pseudo-historical claim of a rapid and recent pole shift with catastrophic results.
Biography
Hapgood received a master's degreeMaster's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1929 in medieval and modern History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. His Ph.D. work on the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
was interrupted by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He taught for a year in Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
and directed a community center in Provincetown, also serving as the executive secretary of Franklin Roosevelt's Crafts Commission.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Hapgood was employed by the Center of Information (which later became the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
and then the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
) and the Red Cross, and also served as a liaison officer between the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
and the Office of the Secretary of the War. After the war, Hapgood began a twenty-year teaching career in the humanities through faculty appointments at Keystone College
Keystone College
Keystone College is a small private college located in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Its official mailing address is La Plume, Pennsylvania in Lackawanna County; however, much of the campus is in Factoryville, Pennsylvania in Wyoming County. The school was founded in 1868.-History:Keystone Academy was...
(1945–1947), Springfield College
Springfield College
Springfield College is a private, coeducational university located in the City of Springfield, Massachusetts. Springfield College is most famous as the site where the sport of basketball was invented...
(1947–1952), Keene State College
Keene State College
Keene State College is a liberal arts college in Keene, New Hampshire. It is a member of the University System of New Hampshire and of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges....
(1956–1966), and New England College
New England College
New England College is a private four-year college in Henniker, New Hampshire, enrolling a total of approximately 1800 undergraduate and graduate students.-History:The school was created in 1946 for students attending college on the G.I...
(1966–1967), where he lectured in world and American history, anthropology, economics, and the history of science.
Hapgood married Tamsin Hughes in 1941. They divorced in 1955. In later years he resided in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
and Richmond, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
. While living in Greenfield, Massachusetts
Greenfield, Massachusetts
Greenfield is a city in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 17,456 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Franklin County. Greenfield is home to Greenfield Community College, the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra, and the Franklin County Fair...
, he was struck by a car and died on December 21, 1982. He is survived by two sons, Frederick (born 1942) and William (born 1944), and two grandsons.
Polar shift
While at Springfield College, a student's question about the Lost Continent of MuMu (lost continent)
Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in one of Earth's oceans, but disappeared at the dawn of human history.The concept and the name were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of...
prompted a class project to investigate the lost continent of Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
, leading Hapgood to investigate possible ways that massive earth changes could occur and exposing him to the literature of Hugh Auchincloss Brown
Hugh Auchincloss Brown
Hugh Auchincloss Brown was an electrical engineer best known for advancing a theory of catastrophic pole shift. Brown claimed that massive accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis in cycles of approximately 4000–7500 years...
.
In 1958, Hapgood published The Earth's Shifting Crust which denied the existence of continental drift
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...
and featured a foreword by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
. In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (1966) and The Path of the Pole (1970), Hapgood proposed the hypothesis that the Earth's axis has shifted numerous times during geological history. In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings he supported the suggestion made by Arlington Mallery that a part of the Piri Reis Map
Piri Reis map
The Piri Reis map is a pre-modern world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The half of the map that survives shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy...
was a depiction of the area of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land
Queen Maud Land
Queen Maud Land is a c. 2.7 million-square-kilometre region of Antarctica claimed as a dependent territory by Norway. The territory lies between 20° west and 45° east, between the British Antarctic Territory to the west and the Australian Antarctic Territory to the east. The latitudinal...
. He used this to propose that a 15 degree pole shift occurred around 9,600 BCE (approx. 11,600 years ago) and that a part of the Antarctic was ice-free at that time, and that an ice-age civilization could have mapped the coast.
He concludes that "Antarctica was mapped when these parts were free of ice", taking that view that an Antarctic warm period coincided with the last ice age in the Northern hemisphere, and that the Piri Reis and other maps were based on "ancient" maps derived from ice-age originals. Later research concerning the paleoclimatology and ice sheets of Antarctica have completely discredited the interpretations by Hapgood that an Antarctic warm period coincided with the last ice age in the Northern hemisphere and any part of it had been ice-free at and prior to 9,600 BCE (approx. 11,600 years ago).
Hapgood also examined a 1531 map by French mathematician and cartographer Oronce Finé
Oronce Finé
Oronce Fine was a French mathematician and cartographer.-Life:...
(aka Oronteus Finaeus). In Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, he reproduces letters received from the chief of a U.S. Air Force cartography section stationed at Westover AFB in 1961. At Hapgood's request, they had studied both Piri Reis and Oronce Finé maps during their off-duty hours, concluding that both were compiled from original source maps of Antarctica at a time when it was relatively free of ice, supporting Hapgood's findings. Hapgood concluded that advanced cartographic knowledge appears on the Piri Reis map and the Oronteus Finaeus map, and must be the result of some unknown and advanced ancient civilization that developed astronomy, navigational instruments, plane geometry and trigonometry, long before Greece or any other known civilization.
According to historians Paul Hoye and Paul Lunde, while Hapgood's work garnered some enthusiasm and praise for its thoroughness, his revolutionary hypotheses largely met with skepticism and were ignored by most scholars. In the book The Piri Reis Map of 1513 Gregory C. McIntosh examines Hapgood's claims for both maps and states that "they fall short of proving or even strongly suggesting that the Piri Reis map and the Fine map depict the actual outline of Antarctica."
Hapgood's unorthodox interpretations such as “Earth Crustal Displacement” were never accepted as valid competing scientific hypotheses, yet his ideas have found popularity in alternative circles. Librarians Rand and Rose Flem-Ath as well as journalist Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock is a British writer and journalist. Hancock specialises in unconventional theories involving ancient civilizations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths and astronomical/astrological data from the past...
base portions of their works on Hapgood’s evidence for catastrophe at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum
Last Glacial Maximum
The Last Glacial Maximum refers to a period in the Earth's climate history when ice sheets were at their maximum extension, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, marking the peak of the last glacial period. During this time, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe and...
. Hapgood's ideas also figure prominently in the 2009 sci-fi/disaster movie, "2012."
Acambaro figurines
Hapgood along with author Earle Stanley Gardner investigated the collection of clay artifacts known as the Acambaro figurines and became convinced they were made thousands of years ago by an unknown culture, a conclusion he acknowledged was rejected by reputable archeologists and paleontologists. The figurines, which most archaeologists dismiss as an elaborate hoax, depict humans interacting with dinosaurs and various other "monsters" such as horned men. In the introduction to later editions of Hapgood's 1973 book, Mystery in Acambaro, David Hatcher ChildressDavid Hatcher Childress
David Hatcher Childress is an American author and publisher of books on topics on alternative history and historical revisionism. His works cover such subjects as pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Astronauts, UFOs, Nikola Tesla, the Knights Templar, lost cities and...
writes that Hapgood was convinced that they were authentic ancient artifacts which indicated that men and dinosaurs had cohabited together in the recent past, and that dinosaurs had not become extinct many millions of years ago.
Elwood Babbitt
Actively interested in parapsychologyParapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
and spirit communication, Hapgood spent a decade working with the New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
medium
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
Elwood Babbitt in attempts to make contact with notable figures from the past. Hapgood audiotaped and transcribed a number of Babbitt's "trance lectures" which purported to come from Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, and the Hindu god Vishnu
Vishnu
Vishnu is the Supreme god in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism. Smarta followers of Adi Shankara, among others, venerate Vishnu as one of the five primary forms of God....
, using the material to publish his final three books:Voices of Spirit, Through the Psychic Experience of Elwood Babbitt (1975), Talks with Christ and His Teachers Through the Psychic Gift of Elwood Babbitt (1981), and The God Within: a Testament of Vishnu, a Handbook for the Spiritual Renaissance (1982).
External links
- Cuoghi, D., 2002, Mysteries of the Piri Reis Map
- Hoye, P. F., with P. Lunde, 1980, Piri Reis and the Hapgood Hypotheses. Aramco World Magazine. vol. 31, no. 1 pp. 18–31.
- Heinrich, P. V., 1996, The Mysterious Origins of Man: Atlantis, Mammoths, and Crustal Shift, The TalkOrigins Archive.
- Mewhinney, S. 1999. Charting Imaginary Worlds: Pole Shifts, Ice Sheets, and Ancient Sea Kings, Catastrophism web page