Leonardo da Vinci studied rocks and landscapes not only to improve the
realism of his paintings, but also in an attempt to understand how the
earth works. Leonardo was obsessed with water, which he considered a
vector to erode ancient rocks and to deposit new sedimentary rocks,
reshaping so over time the “living” earth. The running water is for
earth what blood is for the human body – it flows from the mountains to
the sea, then – so Leonardo – in subterranean veins returns to the
mountains, a circulatory system like found in humans.
The Harmony of Colors
The first "geological" maps used symbols to characterize single outcrops; later maps
introduced shaded areas to display the distribution of specific
rock-types, but due the high printing-costs these maps were printed only
in black & white, making them hard to read - so let´s put some colors on that map...