Lias

Lias may refer to:

Early Jurassic

The Early Jurassic epoch (in chronostratigraphy corresponding to the Lower Jurassic series) is the earliest of three epochs of the Jurassic period. The Early Jurassic starts immediately after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, 199.6 Ma (million years ago), and ends at the start of the Middle Jurassic (175.6 Ma).

Certain rocks of marine origin of this age in Europe are called "Lias" and that name was used for the period, as well, in 19th century geology. In southern Germany rocks of this age are called Black Jurassic.

Origin of the name Lias

There are two possible origins for the name Lias: the first reason is it was taken by a geologist from an English quarryman's dialect pronunciation of the word "layers"; secondly, sloops from north Cornish ports such as Bude would sail across the Bristol Channel to the Vale of Glamorgan to load up with rock from coastal limestone quarries (lias limestone from South Wales was used throughout North Devon/North Cornwall as it contains calcium carbonate to fertilise the poor quality Devonian soils of the West Country); the Cornish would pronounce the layers of limestone as 'laiyers' or 'lias'.

Lias (journal)

Lias (Dutch for sheaf or file; French: liasse) is a biannual double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering the history of learning and education in a very broad sense. It is subtitled Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and its Sources.

History

Lias was established in 1974 by a group of Dutch and Belgian scholars, and subtitled Sources and Documents relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas. The aim was to provide a platform for the edition and study of primary sources of relatively small size pertaining to the cultural and intellectual history of Early Modern Europe. Until 2010, Lias was published by Academic Publishers Associated. The journal appears twice a year, with occasional double-issues. Back-issues of the journal up till 2004 are freely available. The majority of the articles in the first 36 issues concentrated on texts from, or relating to, the Low Countries. In 2010, Lias was taken over by a new publisher, Peeters Academic Publishing. Lias appears on the "initial list" of history journals in the European Reference Index of the Humanities of the European Science Foundation.