Charles Hapgood

Charles Hutchins Hapgood (May 17, 1904 – December 21, 1982) The Path of the Pole was meant as a replacement for The Earth's Shifting Crust after corrections were suggested to him. Hapgood writes in Voices of Spirit: "In later discussions we discussed the theories of my book 'Earth's Shifting Crust', and he [Einstein] suggested that one of them was wrong; as a result of this I revised my book, which subsequently was republished as 'The Path of the Pole'. My own further research confirmed the truth of his observation, which involved technicalities of geophysics."

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 that to propose that a 15° pole shift occurred around 9,600 BC (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" and took the 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.

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 that he states he received from the chief of a U.S. Air Force cartography section stationed at Westover AFB in 1961. These letters say that 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 ancient civilization that developed advanced scientific knowledge before other civilizations such as Greece. 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 ideas on catastrophe have been presented in other works by librarians Rose and Rand Flem-Ath and author and former journalist Graham Hancock, each basing 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.

Acámbaro figures Hapgood and Erle Stanley Gardner thought the collection of clay artifacts known as the Acámbaro figures were created thousands of years ago. The date estimate as well as the notion the artifacts were made by some undiscovered culture was rejected by archeologists and paleontologists. The figurines, which most archaeologists dismiss as an elaborate hoax, depict oddities such as non-avian dinosaurs coexisting with men and horned humans.

Elwood Babbitt Hapgood spent ten years working with New England medium Elwood Babbitt (1921–2001), attempting to make contact with notable figures from the past. Babbitt, a retired carpenter and World War II veteran, had studied trance mediumship at Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment. 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). During this time Babbitt and Hapgood's cousin, Beth Hapgood worked closely with the nearby Brotherhood of the Spirit New Age commune. After Charles Hapgood's death, Beth Hapgood assembled a final volume of Babbitt's trance lectures, Dare the Vision and Endure (1997).