What is the name of this theory?

Question

The theory states that the Earth's axis changed by about 45 degrees a few thousand years ago. Before then, the present north and south poles (and Antarctica) were on the equator.

Answer 1

I don't know but it wasn't a reputable geologist.  It is not really possible.  We have a record of the earth's magnetic field going back millions of years.

Answer 2

Which axis - rotational or geomagnetic?

Neither of those axes changed a few thousand years ago, but the geomagnetic poles wander and have reversed countlesss times over the last few hundred million years.

Certain land masses now found near the poles were indeed near the rotational equator at one point in our geologic history, as a result of moving plates - thats called the theory of plate tectonics.

Geomagnetic reversals are independent of plate movements, but one can be used to measure the other.

Answer 3

Wegener  Polar Wandering. Read the translation of The Origin of Continents and Ocean. Dave you are talking c**p. Others should read the work of Wanach. Lambert. du Toit/

Answer 4

You are thinking of the Russian, Immanuel Velikovsky.

He was a respected psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, and in his later years devloped an eccentric passion for world history and cultures. He realised that cultures all around the world have similar flood/disaster myths, and instead of seeing them as a clever and commonly employed story telling tool, he insisted that the myths recorded a faint tribal memory of a real cosmic catastrophe.

The myth Velikovsky invented was something along the lines that the planet Venus made a very close approach to the Earth ~10,000 years ago (this is completely impossible) and shifted the Earth's axis, ending the ice age, causing floods and other highly entertaining global disasters. He wrote several books on the subject, notably Worlds in Collision in 1950.

(The American mythologist Joseph Campbell did a similar study. He too found fascinating similarities between various culture's myths, but he said they were not a shared memory of a real event, but that the very best stories must use the same recurrent themes. Campbell's research was read by George Lucas who used his theories to create Star Wars - Campbell theories explain why Hollywood make so many sequels and similar films, and why Australian Aboriginals and the Jews of Israel have floods myths. The stories are good).