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«The activity of glaciers is caused by climatic changes. Any history of climate, glaciers, and rock pots is a history of Nature reconstructed by man on a theoretical basis, and therefore subject to a margin of error.
Amongst the first and most important scientists to study the role of glaciers in shaping Earth’s surface was Switzerland’s Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873), a man of many talents, in keeping with the style of the period: botanist, glaciologist, geologist and geographer. It is to him we owe the discovery of the climate which prevailed during the great glaciations of the Quaternary period, a climate that created the conditions which made glaciers flow to the bottom of alpine valleys and the surrounding, now densely populated, plains. |
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To the right the Palü glacier, in retreat since the 19th century
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