376 POSITIONS OF ANCIENT CONTINENTS 
which led to the breaking down of the eastern part of the old 
“Atlantis,’' and the separation of Gondwana into three continental 
portions, have not yet become extinct. 
When we go backward from Recent and Tertic times to the 
Mesozoic age, we find in the geosynclines as reconstructed by Haug 
for that era, an expression of the same mobile tracts, with the addi¬ 
tion of a northern loop separating Asia and Europe. 
Finally the paleogeographic maps of the Paleozoic era clearly 
show that these same belts were also the tracts along which the 
principal movements of the seas and the separation of the conti¬ 
nents took place in Paleozoic time as is, for instance, well seen by 
following the paleogeographic history of the Tethys. 
There existed, however, in Paleozoic time still another important 
geosynclinal, folded and undoubtedly also seismic belt, namely, 
that which extended from Scandinavia through Caledonia in Pre- 
Devonic time, and from Germany, France and southern England 
(Variscan system) in Devonic time to North America (Newfound¬ 
land and Appalachian system). This belt, which is now entirely 
inactive, developed along the boundary of Arch-America (Laur- 
entia) and Archi-Eurasia, and also marks the boundary of the 
eastern portion of Arch-America and the old Poseidon (Archi- 
Atlantic) between America and Europe and probably also that be¬ 
tween the old “Atlantis,” or “Eria,” and the Arctic Ocean in the 
north. This ancient mobile tract has become submerged in the 
greater event of the foundering that led to the formation of the 
North Atlantic, and that has produced a new mobile tract, inter¬ 
secting the old one at nearly right angles. 
From these facts we believe that there is little doubt that the 
principal mobile, seismic belts of the present earth, in their general 
direction, still retain the fundamental boundary lines of the prim¬ 
eval continents and oceans. These principal, still active, belts arc 
the latitudinal (Libbey’s) belt and the circum-Pacific belt. The 
trans-Atlantic belt of Paleozoic time, connecting Europe and the 
Appalachian geosyncline has become extinct; and new belts that 
originated later are the longitudinal belts of the Atlantic and In¬ 
dian oceans. 
We have described the uniform direction of the Pre-Cambrian 
folding over vast eras; and, assuming, as a working hypothesis. 
