[7] The author of the book was first clearly identified in "The table of the Classic Mountains and Seas" written by Liu Xiu in the Western Han dynasty.

[8] Wang Chong and Zhao Ye in the Eastern Han dynasty also identified the author as Boyi in their works, and was modified by later generations in the process of spreading.

Chen Zhensun's Zhizhai Bibliography, Zhu Xi's Annotations on Chu Ci: Dialectical Differentiation of Chu Ci, Hu Yinglin's Shaoshi Mountain Room Pen Cluster and others have acknowledged that it is a book written during the classical era, but it is not written by Yu the Great and Boyi.

This theory originated from Liu Shipei, who in his research on "A Study of Zou Yan's Theory on the Plurality of Literature in the Western Han Dynasty" inferred that, according to records in Mozi, the book Biographic of the Great Yu was a combined version of Records of the Grand Historian: Biography of Dawan and the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which supports the idea that the book was written by Zou Yan.

[8] In addition, some scholars also believe that the author of the book is written by a disciple of Mozi, named Sui Chaozi, during the Warring States period.

Ancient Chinese scholars also called it an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge and a strange work with the most myths that records ancient China's "history, philosophy, mythology, religion, medicine, folklore, and ethnicity", reflecting a wide range of cultural phenomena and also involving "geography, astronomy, meteorology, medicine, animals, plants, minerals ..."[14] Contemporary academia has three main different arguments for the nature of the book: During this period, the contents of the book were considered authentic and reliable.

Due to the introduction of Western anthropology, folklore/ etc., many scholars regarded the book as a synthesis of various disciplines, using it as a reference for analysis and summarizations.