For centuries, the Christian world accepted the Biblical story of a flood. A change from this Diluvial interpretation only occurred during the 19th Century as a result of ideas expounded by Lyell, Dar- win, and others. The work of Charles Lyell particularly influenced contemporary thinking regarding the origin of strata, and the concept of the catastrophic flood was replaced by deposition governed by the uniformitarian principles.
In recent times, a new Science of Diluvialism has emerged and is making rapid strides. Many geological features are more consistent with catastrophic formation than with slow formation over millions of years. This new approach to the interpretation of some of the earth’s features is, of course, contrary to uniformitarian thinking and was not well accepted initially. When Harlen Bretz, who was professor of Geology at the University of Chicago in 1923, advocated that some of the features of the state of Washington were more consistent with a catastrophic flood formation, they found his conclusion totally unac- ceptable. The debate raged for years, and it was only in 1965 that the International Association for Quaternary Research organized a field trip to visit the area and came to the same conclusions that Bretz had propagated. The thinking had come full circle, and catastrophism was once more an accepted model of landscape development. In 1979, Bretz received the Penrose medal, the United States’ most prestigious geological award.29