Ice ages and continental glaciation
Edades de hielo y glaciaciones continentales
- Date
- 1837-1840 · confidence high
- Place
- Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Credited to
- Louis Agassiz; Jean de Charpentier, Ignaz Venetz, Karl Schimper
- People
- 👤 Ignaz Venetz1788–1859👤 Jean de Charpentier1786–1855👤 Karl Friedrich Schimper1803–1867👤 Louis Agassiz1807–1873
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Agassiz proposed that erratic boulders, moraines and striated rocks in Europe had been left by glaciers that once covered the continent in an 'Eiszeit'. He replaced diluvial explanations with a radically different climatic past.
Coordinates of Neuchâtel, where Agassiz gave his 1837 address to the Helvetic Society. Alpine hunters and guides already held that the glaciers had once been larger.
What it led to
- Palaeoclimatology
- Milankovitch cycles
- Reinterpretation of the relief of the Northern Hemisphere
- End of biblical flood explanations in geology
Built on
- Observations by Alpine peasants and Venetz
- Lyell's uniformitarianism
Made possible
- Milankovitch cycles1920-1941 / confirmado 1976
- Ice cores and the paleoclimate record1966 / 1987 / 2004
- Glacial geomorphology
- Quaternary stratigraphy