Geology finds deep time
Lyell argues the Earth is unimaginably old, and biblical chronology collapses.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Hutton had argued in the 1780s that the rock record showed no vestige of a beginning; Lyell's Principles of Geology from 1830 makes the case systematically, that present-day processes acting over immense spans explain the landscape. Darwin took the first volume aboard the Beagle. Without an old Earth, evolution by natural selection has no time to operate, so this is the necessary precondition for everything that follows.