Research shows that during the last 200 million years a total true polar wander of some 30° has occurred, but that no rapid shifts in Earth's geographic axial pole were found during this period.
[3] Between approximately 790 and 810 million years ago, when the supercontinent Rodinia existed, two geologically rapid phases of true polar wander may have occurred.
An early mention of a shifting of Earth's axis can be found in an 1872 article entitled "Chronologie historique des Mexicains"[7] by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a specialist in Mesoamerican codices who interpreted ancient Mexican myths as evidence for four periods of global cataclysms that had begun around 10,500 BCE.
Brown also argued that accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis, identifying cycles of approximately seven millennia.
[8][9] In his pseudo-scientific 1950 work Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky postulated that the planet Venus emerged from Jupiter as a comet.
[12][13][14] Charles Hapgood is now perhaps the best remembered early proponent of the hypothesis that some climate changes and ice ages could be explained by large sudden shifts of the geographic poles.
He cited recent North Pole locations in Hudson Bay (60°N, 73°W), the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway (72°N, 10°E) and the Yukon (63°N, 135°W).
[21] Data indicates that the geographical poles have not deviated by more than about 5° over the last 130 million years, contradicting the hypothesis of a cataclysmic polar wander event.