1313-1375

Italian writer, best known for the Decameron(1353), who discussed geology in his Filocolo (c. 1340). In the latter text, he wrote on the origin of fossils and maintained that the sea had once covered the Earth. The willingness of Boccaccio, an educated man for his time, to accept ancient myths is instructive regarding the medieval mind: at one time he reported that the remains of Polyphemus, the Cyclops described in Homer's Odyssey, had been located in a cave in Sicily. According to Boccaccio, the giant was 300 ft (91.5 m) tall.