Dream Pool Essays Documents Geological Insights

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Among the hundreds of entries in Shen Kuo's masterwork was an observation that would not be surpassed for centuries: marine fossils found in mountain strata proved that land now far above sea level had once been ocean floor. Shen deduced that landscapes changed over vast periods through sedimentation and uplift - a proto-geological insight that anticipated Western uniformitarianism by seven hundred years. The Dream Pool Essays treated the earth as a document to be read, not merely walked upon.