In 1819, Giovanni Battista Brocchi proposed that the columns below the bands had been protected from the molluscs by being buried in silt or volcanic ash. The first volume of Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche by Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff, published in 1822, included an account of the ruins as demonstrating relative changes in land and sea level. Hoff's second volume of 1824 reviewed how earthquakes might have caused this, and mentioned Jorio's study. Hoff's account motivated Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to publish his own idea, coined when he visited the site in 1787. In Goethe's 1823 Architektonisch-naturhistorisches Problem, he suggested that silt or ash had partially buried the columns and at the same time held back water forming a lagoon above sea level. Robert Jameson had this paper translated for his Edinburgh journal, to oppose Playfair's views. Other naturalists thought this unlikely, as the fresh water lagoon would not have supported marine molluscs, and the sea was by then higher than at the time of Goethe's visit.
