Benoît de Maillet (Saint-Mihiel, 12 April 1656 – Marseille, 30 January 1738) was a well-travelled French diplomat and natural historian.

De Maillet's geological observations convinced him that the earth could not have been created in an instant because the features of the crust indicate a slow development by natural processes.

[3][4] The printed text was the result of ten years' editing by the Abbot Jean Baptiste de Mascrier in an attempt to reconcile the proposed system with the dogma of the Catholic Church.

The device is transparently obvious, but understandable because the philosopher contradicts the literal word of the Bible at a time when this still carried some risk to his person and livelihood.

It was, in its essence, an ultraneptunian theory of the Earth, and was to a large extent based on field geology discerned during trips throughout Egypt and other Mediterranean countries.

It is based essentially on processes today known as sedimentation, excluding all other geological or geomorphological agents except some minor aspects of weathering.

Not appreciating that the land might rise, he concluded that the Earth had originally been entirely covered by water (a theory of René Descartes), which had since been steadily lost into the vortex.

Sea life, fish, shellfish, algae, diversified and their remains were covered with sediment and became secondary rocks laid down on the sides of primitive mountains.

The really important observation he made was that the lower layers of sedimentary rocks contained animals and plants different from those of today, and some types that were unrecognizable.

What he had done was to "combine a correct understanding of artefacts of the Iron and Bronze Ages with the erroneous interpretation of Cainozoic vertebrates as human skeletons, and silicified logs in fluvio-continental deposits as petrified ships (as Steno did).