The plan that, in the past, glaciers had been far more extensive was folk knowledge in some alpine regions of Europe (Imbrie and Imbrie, p25, quote a woodcutter telling de Charpentier of the former extent of the Swiss Grimsel glacier). No single person imaginary the idea. Between 1825 and 1833, Jean de Charpentier assembled proof in support of this idea. In 1836 Charpentier influenced Louis Agassiz of the theory, and Agassiz published it in his book Étude sur les glaciers of 1840.
At this early stage of knowledge, what were being studied were the glacial periods within the past few hundred thousand years, during the present ice age. The far previous ice ages' very existence was unsuspected.
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