Buffon studies a fossil beside exposed rock strata.

Reading the archives of the earth

Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), a French naturalist, begins his Epochs of Nature with the work of a historian. That historian consults records, examines medals and deciphers ancient inscriptions. The sequence of actions matters to the book. Before Buffon can tell a history of the earth, he needs to explain how anyone can learn about a time during which no human observer was there to keep a record.

A document without writing

[…] in natural history one must search the archives of the world, draw ancient monuments from the bowels of the earth, collect their fragments and assemble into a body of evidence all the indications of the physical changes that may lead us back to the different ages of nature.

– Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Les Époques de la nature, 1778, p. 1–2.[1]

The image of an archive makes the interior of the earth a place of safekeeping. Nobody assembled what lies there for future readers. An excavated object seldom bears a sentence giving its age. The naturalist’s work therefore begins with recovering and collecting things. Only when several pieces lie together can their positions, composition or resemblance be read as possible evidence of a common event.

What can be learned from a fragment?

Immediately after the old monuments Buffon speaks of their fragments. The choice of word narrows the distance between his immense undertaking and a small find held in a researcher’s hand. A damaged piece can still bear witness. To make it part of a history, however, the observer must show how it fits with other traces and what change they reveal together. The opening sentence thus assigns a particular task to stones. They extend human memory back into a past beyond the reach of any written archive. Reading them requires comparisons for which the naturalist remains responsible.