page_title: Antediluvian
section_title: In early geology
hierarchical_section_title: Antediluvian / Timing the antediluvian period / In early geology
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Kliff an der Steilküste von Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, bestehend aus einer Wechsellagerung aus dunklen Tonsteinen und Kalksteinen der Blue-Lias-Formation, früher Jura. English: Sea cliff made up of an alternation of Lower Jurassic dark claystones and limestones of the Blue Lias Formation at Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK.
context_page_description: The antediluvian period is the time period chronicled in the Bible between the fall of humans and the Genesis flood narrative in the biblical cosmology. The term was coined by Thomas Browne. The narrative takes up chapters 1–6 of the Book of Genesis. The term found its way into early geology and science until the late Victorian era. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.
context_section_description: Early scientific attempts at reconstructing the history of the Earth were founded on the biblical narrative and thus used the term antediluvian to refer to a period understood to be essentially similar to the biblical one. Early scientific interpretation of the biblical narrative divided the antediluvian into sub-periods based on the six days of Creation:
  Pre-Adamitic (the first 5 days, Gen 1:1 to Gen 2:3)
  Primary (the formation of the physical universe and the earth)
  Secondary (creation of plants and animals)
  Adamitic (or Tertiary, from the Creation of man to the Great Flood; Gen 2:5 to Gen 7:8), corresponding to St. Augustine's First Age of his Six Ages of the World
  Prior to the 19th century, rock was classified into three main types: primary or primitive (igneous and metamorphic rock), secondary (sedimentary rock) and tertiary (sediments). The primary rocks (like granite and gneiss) are void of fossils and were thought to be associated with the very creation of the world in the primary Pre-Adamitic period. The secondary rocks, often containing copious fossils, though human remains had not been found, were thought to have been laid down in the secondary Pre-Adamitic period. The Tertiary rocks (sediments) were thought to have been put down after Creation and possibly in connection to a flood event, and were thus associated with the Adamitic period. The Post-Flood period was termed the Quaternary, a name still in use in geology.
  As mapping of the geological strata progressed in the early decades of the 19th century, the estimated lengths of the various sub-periods were greatly increased. The fossil rich Secondary Pre-Adamitic period was divided up into the Coal period, the Lias and the Chalk period, later expanded into the now-familiar geologic time scale of the Phanerozoic. The term antediluvian was used in natural science well into the 19th century and lingered in popular imagination despite increasingly detailed stratigraphy mapping the Earth's past, and was often used for the Pleistocene period, where humans existed alongside now extinct megafauna.
caption: Strata of "Secondary rock", Lyme Regis
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