Glaciers once filled valleys and plains (Venetz and Charpentier)
Los glaciares ocuparon antes valles y llanuras (Venetz y Charpentier)
- Date
- 1821-1834 · confidence medium
- Place
- Valais, Switzerland
- Credited to
- Ignace Venetz and Jean de Charpentier
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The engineer Ignace Venetz argued from 1821 that moraines and erratic boulders in the Alps proved a past expansion of glaciers, and Jean de Charpentier extended the idea in 1834 with field evidence. They were the starting point of Agassiz's glacial theory.
Priority is disputed: Bernhard Kuhn (1787), the chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1815-1818), Jens Esmark in Norway (1824) and Hutton and Playfair put forward similar ideas earlier. The coordinates are those of the Rhône valley.
What it led to
- glacial theory and the concept of an ice age
- an explanation of erratic boulders without invoking the Flood