The hypothesis revered during the 17th century stating a series of
immense, brief, world-wide disasters such as
floods,
earthquakes, and
volcanic eruptions changed the
Earth's
crust greatly and can account for the development of
mountains,
valleys, and other features of the Earth. Believers of catastrophism also believed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, a number determined by
Bishop Ussher in the 15th century.
By the 1830's,
James Hutton's
Uniformitarianism theory prevailed over this hypothesis.