This book explores the development of ideas and theories about enormous floods, both gradual and catastrophic and their role in fashioning the Earth's surface through the centuries, from ancient myths and classical writings, to the Restoration and the Enlightenment. It also studies the late 18th and 19th centuries, when evidence was unearthed which suggested that there had been several grand cataclysms during the course of Earth's history, the most recent of which was identified with the Noachian cataclysm. It is discussed how in the 19th century a gradual inundation of continents was proposed, an idea which was taken up by the proponents of marine regression. The author concludes by studying the possibility of catastrophic flooding has again been raised.
- ISBN10 0198287135
- ISBN13 9780198287131
- Publish Date 1 February 1990
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 May 2000
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 232
- Language English