Dean,
About the size of Mars AND David Pratt's online book....
Commenting about your earlier note to Mike: "...a width of 375 miles would make Olympus Mons about 11 % of the diameter of the planet..." Amazing! Cater may be very right that Mars - and other bodies - are actually much larger than popularly believed.
Dean, YOU alerted us to DAVID PRATT'S latest URL, his online book: "MYSTERIES OF THE INNER EARTH." Excellent stuff. I FINALLY printed off and read all 4 chapters. This guy is a first rate researcher. Voluminos references at the end of each chapter (including numerous from Mike Mott, Lamprecht and Cater.)
Pratt's first chapter "The Solid Earth Hypothosis" thoroughly covers most of the beliefs embraced today by orthodox scientists. And (as he did so well in his earlier excellent piece on "Gravity"), Pratt "kindly" but effectively dumps many of their beliefs, "tectonic plates," among them. That first chapter is a science primer EVERYONE (on list or off) should read. Complete absence of any comments by others so far, surprises me. Apparently other list members have not yet read Pratt's online book! But I'm assuming YOU, Dean, have by now also read all 4 chapters.
Like Chapter One, Pratt's second Chapter "The Hollow Earth Hypothesis" also "kindly" but effectively dumps many of the assertions in past HE books, including Etidorpha, but especially writings by Marshall Gardner. Chapter Two alone will not win adherents to those authors' HE ideas. Pratt MAY be very disturbing to the beliefs of some members about the HE. But if we're all honest, every list member should read the chapter and assess what Pratt has written, for themselves.
Pratt also "dumps" some HE assertions in Chapter 3, "Polar Puzzles," but does supports some.
He redeems himself in Chapter 4, "Mythology, Paradise and the Innner World."
From Thosophical, Buddhist and Hindu writings (all familiar to Dean) he presents much to enhance the existence of mystical - yet possibly physically real - lands and peoples in an inner earth.
If anyone has not saved the Pratt URL(s) you gave us, here they are again...
Mysteries of the Inner Earth by David Pratt
May 2001 (I listed the individual URLs for each chapter)...
Part 1: The Solid Earth Hypothesis
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/inner1.htm
Part 2: The Hollow Earth Hypothesis
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/inner2.htm
Part 3: Polar Puzzles
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/inner3.htm
Part 4: Mythology, Paradise, and the Inner World
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/inner4.htm
Also, Dean... Although Pratt is obviously completely unknowing (like 99+%) about the 5 books of James Churchward, I was amazed to find his first chapter SUPPORTING (or at least not contradicting) most of Churchward's Scientific notions! Since you haven't read them all (and may never) you have only my word for this. Had Pratt been fully aware of what Churchward wrote, I think those ideas would have been a part of Chapter One, pro and possibly con.
Churchward's conceptions on Gravity, Heat, Light, etc, apparently DIFFER from Cater's. But not as much as both differ with the currently accepted notions of orthodox science. I haven't yet reconciled Cater's "soft particles" and "hard particles" theory with Churchward's "4 primary Forces" regulating the universe. Maybe they can't be reconciled. What is important is which man's concepts BETTER explain most of Earth's physical phenomena. Though admittedly deficient in most of Cater's views, from those YOU have presented so far, I am still of the opinion that Churchward's concepts BETTER explain MOST physical phenomena... including electromagnetic. Had Churchward lived beyond 1936, he surely would have revised - and enhanced - his earlier beliefs. But BASICS would still apply.
Possibly "old" Churchward is back now, as some scientist we've not heard of, aware of his past as Churchward, or not. If he is, I hope the guy (or gal) surfaces sometime soon, before I depart. Still one of THE greatest unrecognized scientific minds of the past century, in my humble opinion.
P.S. The NAGAS (Naacal Priests) were NOT serpent worshippers as some continue to write. The serpent was only a SYMBOL for the Creator in action.
Also, in that recent email piece, Childress wrote that the Indian RAMA civilization dates back 15,000 years. Even so, Dean, you seem to suggest the Indo Europeans (Aryans?) may have arrived much earlier. 15,000 years back? Not 2,000 to 3,000 years back? That's a real stretch.
You probably DIDN'T thoroughly read (or read much at all in) those two Churchward "Children of MU" historical chapters (India and the great Uighur Empire) I sent earlier by email. Like Childress about the RAMAs 15,000 ago, Churchward wrote of India's advanced civilizations 25,000 years back. And what he termed "Hindu" literature dated back long before the Uighur (Aryan) remnants arrived after departing the mountains for the plains of India and other areas. The Medes and Persians were also OTHER (Aryan) separated Uighur mountain remnants that came down from the mountains in different areas, according to Churchward... none of them out of a hole in the north pole. There may be a populated hollow earth, but it appears quite unlikely that was where the Aryans came from, in my opinion.
Churchward, writing of the great Uighur Empire, stretching from the Pacific to about Moscow today, wrote that they also had outposts or small sub colonies throughout Europe all the way to Ireland and Spain (possible ancestors of the Basques). This was long BEFORE the mountains were uplifted by subterranean gas belts mostly between 15,000 to 12,000 years back. Like half the Asian Uighur Empre that was earlier drowned at the same time by north moving waves (without ice), many of those European Uighur outposts may have been wiped out when the waves of water (with ice), from the last "magnetic cataclysm," swept down over the pole south onto the western parts of northern Europe around 17,000 years past. Some obviously survived.
If Churchward's "history" is correct, the half of the Asian Uighur people that did not drown from the earlier magnetic cataclysm waves in Asia, were killed by the millions when the Mountains were shoved up. Only handfuls survived in valleys uplifted with the mountains. In austere conditions, over thousands of years those Uighur Aryans multiplied and eventually came down to the replenished plains of India, the middle east, and spread westward across all parts of Europe. If Churchward was right, we now know HOW and from WHERE most of the "Aryans" originated. - Dick