The first natural philosophers
Someone begins explaining the world without mentioning the gods
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Their answers were mostly wrong — water, air, an indefinite substance — but the form of the question was revolutionary. Democritus went furthest, holding that everything consists of indivisible particles in a void, a guess that landed remarkably well two thousand years before it could be tested. Miletus lay at the edge of the Persian empire, with access to Babylonian astronomy and Egyptian geometry.
For children
In the Greek city of Miletus, Thales and his students asked what everything is really made of — and answered without mentioning gods. It sounds simple, but it was entirely new: nature could be explained by nature itself.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org