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were particularly interested in the origin of mountains and the nature of
volcanoes. This is not surprising given the central axis of the Apennines
and the active volcanic centres in Naples, in the Aeolian Islands of
Stromboli and Vulcano, and in Sicily.
On continental Europe a large number of individuals attempted
to construct a general stratigraphical framework. Among these earliest
attempts, the most noteworthy were those of Johann Gottlob Lehmann
(1719-1767), Giovanni Arduino (1714-1795), Torbern Olof Bergman
(1735-1784) and Werner. The writings of others were further from the
mark - for example, Benoˆt de Maillet in his topic Telliamed suggested
that the oceans covered the whole globe, and that they were responsible
for the deposition of mountain ranges and the sculpturing of the Earth's
surface. However, as we have seen, he ventured further to propagate the
idea that the oceans were progressively shrinking, and had been over a
period of two billion years. Two billion years - such a timeframe was
unimaginable, and the reaction from the church authorities soon
caused de Maillet's radical theories to founder. One must remember
that these ideas were formulated at a time when the biblical thinking
on the origin of the Earth was still very much in fashion, and that the
church still had great powers of persuasion against such anti-biblical
ideas, affecting both the readers of these works and sometimes even
their authors.
Lehmann was a teacher, mining engineer and surveyor who was
familiar with the geology of his native Prussia. He published a number
of topics which advanced some interesting ideas concerning the ori-
gins and structure of mountains; he argued that volcanoes and earth-
quakes were important processes in moulding the surface topography
of the Earth; and he thought that the crust was made up of a series of as
many as thirty layers laid down under water. At the same time, he
promoted some ideas that would nowadays be greeted with laughter.
One of his celebrated, and oft-quoted, suggestions was that gold was
produced by the Sun, as it was more frequently found in areas of hot
climate rather than in colder latitudes. But Lehmann's important
contribution
to
stratigraphy
was
in
description
of
a
tripartite
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