Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of North Africa. All diplomats hope to retire on a good government
pension and his became available in 1720. He spent two years in Paris
before finally settling for the remainder of his life beside the sea at
Marseilles.
Maillet was influenced by Descartes' ideas and did not accept
the biblical accounts when it came to chronological matters. His
thesis paralleled the Cartesian scheme in that the Earth was a former
star or sun, but he added his own ideas: the Earth was once completely
covered with water, and he argued that sea levels had dropped through
time. To test this assertion he devised his own personal hydrographic
station through which he measured changes in sea level over a con-
siderable time-span. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Maillet had observed
seashells high up on Italian mountainsides and recognised that they
must have been underwater at some point in the past. As the sea level
dropped, eventually the Earth would dry out and dessicate, and the
internal volcanic fires would cause it to re-ignite and become a star
again. Mountains, he suggested were formed on the sea bed of sedi-
ments piled high by strong underwater currents, and then exposed as
the sea levels dropped. He also suggested an evolutionary sequence for
plants and animals: higher plants such as trees were derived from
seaweed, while all animals had a marine source too. Birds evolved
from fish, terrestrial animals from marine animals. In this, he was
broadly correct.
These thoughts were documented in the topic in a very strange
style: the narrative consisted of a conversation between two very
different people, an Indian philosopher and a French missionary, and
it could be argued that he did this in an attempt to have the work
considered a piece of fiction. It was not. The philosopher, named
Telliamed, which any devotee of crosswords will immediately spot
is de Maillet spelt backwards, argued that as ocean water evaporated,
the water vapour was lost into space, and consequently sea levels fell
at a rate of three inches per century. This figure was based on his own
hydrographic observations. On the basis of knowing the height above
sea level of various seashells, he was able to get an estimate of the
