As they move, they continuously change the size and the shape of the oceans and continents. Before the advent of plate tectonics, however, some people already believed that the present –day continents were the fragmented pieces of pre-existing larger landmasses or supercontinents.
The sixth century BC, Greek philosopher Thales suggested that the world floating on water, which accounted for the new springs that often spurt water and mud during and after an earthquake.
In 1596 the Dutch mapmaker Abraham Ortelius commented in his book that it looked as of South American and Africa had once been joined were later torn apart.
In the early part of the 1700s, most of the people who studied the Earth believed that the planet had changed very little over time.
Rene Descartes French philosopher and naturalist in his ‘Principia philosophiae’ (144) proposed that Earth contains a core with a liquid similar to the sun and wrapped by layers of rock, metal, water and air.
In 1785, James Hutton, Scottish doctor presented his idea to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He proposed the theory of uniformitarianism, that all of the geologic features people see in ancient rocks can be explained by processes that can be observed in action today. It means the present is the key to the past.
In 1795, he published his findings in a two-volume book titled Theory of the Earth in which he provided dozens of examples to support his idea.
In 1912, 32 year old German meteorologist named Alfred Lothar Wegener contented that, around 200 million years ago the supercontinent Pangaea began to split apart.
Alexander Du Toit, Professor of Geology at Johannesburg University and one of Wegener’s staunchest supporters, proposed that Pangaea first broke into two large continental landmasses, Laurasia in the northern hemisphere and Gondwanaland in the southern hemisphere.
In 1967 William Jason Morgan and McKenzie proposed the broad outline for the theory of plate tectonic. While many unanswered questions remain, the theory of plate tectonics has become a cornerstone of modern geology.
Discovery of plate tectonics
