The Greeks, Romans and Arabs recognized many physical processes of landscape-formation, but their ideas had no real effect on later geomorphological thought. In contrast, the Renaissance stimulated landscape studies and during it geomorphic processes were mentioned by several authors. For example, in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), in Germany, Agricola (Georg Bauer, 1494–1555) and in France, Bernard Palissy (1510–90) all believed in the erosive power of rivers. These early writings on stream erosion appeared at the same time as many translations of the Bible which, with the help of the printing press, soon caused the ideas of the Creation and of earth history in Genesis to dominate European geological thought. A biblical or Mosaic chronology was gradually evolved, and in 1654 Archbishop Ussher and others concluded that “Heaven and Earth, centre and circumference, were made in the same instance of time, and clouds full of water, and man were created on the 26th October 4004 B.C....
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Beckinsale, R.P., Chorley, R.J. (1968). Geomorphology, history of . In: Geomorphology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31060-6_142
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