# Like who came up with the initial idea/ theory and when was it first proven?
In: Planetary Science
The theory of ice ages comes from the Swiss geologist and naturalist Louis Agassiz.
In 1836, he met the geologists Ignaz Venetz and Jean de Charpentier who had both been studying Swiss glaciers and proposed they had once covered much larger areas of the country. De Charpentier had found isolated rocks standing in the countryside (erratics) that resembled the large boulders dumped at the snouts of glaciers as well as banks of rock (called moraine) far from glaciers that looked exactly like the piles of rock found along the edge of glaciers. However, neither Ignaz or de Charpentier could work out how glaciers formed and moved.
Agassiz, working alongside the British geologist William Buckland, studied the uplands of the UK and came to the conclusion that ice had spread from the mountains into the lowlands during a period of great cold. Agassiz pretty much came up with the explanations of how glaciers flow as well as identifying the signs they had once been present – not just erratics and moraines, but also the scratch marks (striations) they leave in the underlying rock. Agassiz and Buckland’s work was published in the UK with the phrase ‘ice age’ appearing in 1837, and he went on to show there were similar signs of glaciation all round the world.
Latest Answers