First formulated by Danish clergyman-scientist Niels Stensen (1638-1686), the "law of superposition" was originally used as a tool for understanding the relative ages of rock formations. By Frere's time, it was also being used by paleontologists to determine the relative ages of fossils. Frere could, once again, allow his chain of reasoning to remain implicit, knowing that his audience would understand it. He could simply assert, without further explanation, that the tools must be older than the shells and bones in the bed of sand above them.
Frere could, finally, assume his readers' belief in an old Earth that had undergone both geological and biological changes since its origin. European scholars had, as late as the late seventeenth century, maintained that the human race was 6,000 years old (a figure deduced from Old Testament genealogies) and Earth (based on a literal reading of Genesis) only days older. This view of a young Earth created in essentially itsmodern form slowly crumbled, however, over the course of the eighteenth century. Geological and paleontological evidence for a long, eventful Earth history accumulated steadily, and liberal interpreters of scripture suggested that Genesis should be read as poetic metaphor rather than detailed reportage.
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