Origin of ice age theory

Independently of these debates, the Swiss civil engineer (1788–1859) in 1829, explained the dispersal of erratic boulders in the Alps, the nearby Jura Mountains and the North German Plain as being due to huge glaciers. When he read his paper before the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, most scientists remained sceptical. Finally, Venetz managed to convince his friend Jean de Charpentier. De Charpentier transformed Venetz's idea into a theory with a glaciation limited to the Alps. His thoughts resembled Wahlenberg's theory. In fact, both men shared the same volcanistic, or in de Charpentier’s case rather assumptions, about earth history. In 1834, de Charpentier presented his paper before the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft. In the meantime, the German botanist (1803–1867) was studying mosses which were growing on erratic boulders in the alpine upland of Bavaria. He began to wonder where such masses of stone had come from. During the summer of 1835 he made some excursions to the Bavarian Alps. Schimper came to the conclusion that ice must have been the means of transport for the boulders in the alpine upland. In the winter of 1835 to 1836 he held some lectures in Munich. 

Schimper then assumed that there must have been global times of obliteration (“Verödungszeiten“) with a cold climate and frozen water.

Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of to the fact that the glaciers had once extended much fartherLater similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1767–1858) explained erratic boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending further.

An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a discussion with the Swiss-German geologist (1786–1855) in 1834. Comparable explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland and in Such explanations could also be found in other parts of the world. When the Bavarian naturalist (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850 the natives attributed fossil to the former action of glaciers