Da Vinci The Geologist

The Guardian, via Ritholtz:

As a geologist, Leonardo anticipated the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries who were to prove that the Earth is far older than it says in the book of Genesis. When scientific pioneers around 1800 recognised fossils for what they are – traces of ancient animals – and analysed the processes that create and erode rocks, they quickly reached a set of conclusions that led to Darwin's theory of evolution and a crisis of Christianity. But amazingly, a self-taught researcher called Leonardo da Vinci thought through a lot of their key discoveries hundreds of years earlier.

Leonardo had the following astonishing insights about geology and fossils:

1) Shells that appear on mountain tops and fish bones in caves must be the remains of animals that long ago swam in these places when they were covered in sea. The claim they were swept there by the biblical flood is a completely inadequate explanation. So the surface of the earth has changed over time, with land where once there was sea.

2) The most powerful natural force is the movement of water in rivers. Water has sculpted the very largest features of the landscape, a process that must have taken a very long time.

3) Therefore slow and relentless natural processes, not the divine instantaneous act described in Genesis, have shaped our planet.

The dude sure was fascinating.  He puzzled through a fascinating number of concepts.