Astronomical theories of climate: a long history

What have been the characteristic periods of climatic variations over the last few million years? Those responsible for these natural variations are the parameters of the Earth’s movement around the Sun: eccentricity of its elliptical trajectory, obliquity and precession of its axis of rotation. How did the astronomers of the 18th century get the intuition of alternating glaciations and interglacial periods? And on what basis did the climatologists of the last century rely to model with a fairly good accuracy the real variations revealed by their geological traces