Where are the Olives?

You won’t find Miletus on Google Maps today, but if it existed 2500 years ago, it would point you to a city on the western coast of Turkey facing the Mediterranean. That city would be the equivalent of what New York City is today - a busy hub of commerce, culture, and entertainment, attracting the most talented people from all around.

Welcome to Miletus. Once you pass through the town gates, you’ll likely find yourself gravitating towards the town’s market, located between the theater and the agora, where most villagers hang out each morning. The atmosphere is buzzing today. You can hear shouts, screams, and laughter coming from all angles, each seemingly louder than the last. All sorts of merchandise are on display - silk, pottery, bread, and tons of spices that have just arrived from Egypt. There are a few empty stands by the fig merchant, as if something is missing.

On the corner of the market, just behind the well, is a man named Thales confronting a small group of angry farmers. Thales is easily recognizable with his tall, well-built figure, chiseled features, dense curly hair, and strong jawline. If you close your eyes and picture a stereotype or statue of a Greek god, you’ll get an idea of Thales' appearance.

The commotion is about olives. The dozen or so angry men are visibly upset. An argument breaks out. One of the men throws a stone at Thales, but misses him. Others are more civil and try to convince Thales to give back the olive plantations that they claim he stole from them.

Thales did not steal the plantation. He legally bought it from the men in early spring of that year, expecting a good harvest. He didn’t have much desire to work the farm and simply allowed the olives to ripen and fall, without selling them on the market.

Thales was interested in weather. He had been observing temperatures and rainfall patterns for the past ten years and reached the conclusion that a warm spring coupled with excessive rainfall leads to a spectacular olive harvest. He was proven right.

Thales was not just interested in the climate. He was interested in how things changed around him. If you had dinner with Thales, he might talk about storms, droughts, earthquakes, stars, and sunsets. He might even ask you to explain why seasons change the way they do.

Crucially, he was not satisfied with the answers to his burning questions that already existed at the time. The current explanations were typically found in myths, tales, and fables told around the campfire with references to gods, witches, and dragons.

He didn’t believe any of that. He was keen to find rational explanations for the world around him, with a special focus on nature.

Why nature? Because it is in a constant state of change and transformation. While mountains, rocks, and forests stay the same, night changes to day, winter becomes spring, water becomes ice. For the early philosophers, this state of flux was fascinating, and that’s why many of them are referred to as ‘Natural Philosophers’.

However, as much as they enjoyed pondering about the changes, they needed to find comfort in the fact that there is something that does not change, an element that is constant, that all things must come from. (2)

For Thales, that central element was water. He thought everything was made up of water. If we look outside at the oceans, we see water surrounding the land. If we think of humans or animals, well, they need water to survive. Water also changes its form depending on what we do with it; it evaporates, it freezes. He believed that therefore all things must have a deeply rooted connection to water.

To go any deeper than that would be missing the point. His answers and explanations may sound primitive today, but what matters more are the questions he asked and his desire to find a better answer than what already existed.

And this is the main reason why Thales is a hero. He didn’t have to come up with anything new. When studying early pioneers, many were forced to come up with a new idea or solution to survive. Thales already had an explanation for everything, and the myths gave him all the answers that explained how things worked around us. They gave comfort to people for thousands of years before.

But not to Thales. He was the first to not buy into those explanations. By doing so in the buzzing central market of Miletus, he sowed the first seeds of philosophy.

1. Many years later Aristotle said that Thales in this way, proved that philosophers can easily be wealthy if they wish, but “this is not what they are interested in”

2. Monism is the doctrine that the world is made up of one substance. All of pre-Socratic philosophers believed in this, they only disagreed on what was that substance.