THALES · Mass-production, landscape transformation and the birth of science in the land of Thales (8th-6th centuries BCE)

Mass-production, landscape transformation and the birth of science in the land of Thales (8th-6th centuries BCE)

According to historical accounts (esp. Herodotus’ Histories), the Greek city of Miletos, in ancient Ionia (an area mostly within modern Turkey), became a major metropolis and sea-power between the 8th to the 6th centuries BCE, founding many colonies around the highly-profitable Black Sea region, relying on its hinterland and associated international oracle sanctuary of Didyma for economic and spiritual prestige respectively. During this pre-modern era of globalisation, the peninsula and neighbouring cities became famous for its scholars and craftsmen. The Ionian enlightenment’ initiated by Milesian and other Ionian philosophers (including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras) has been characterized as the founding point of modern European philosophy and science. At the end of the 6th century, the state of Miletos became embroiled in a political struggle with the expanding Achaemenid/Persian empire, suffering taxes, revolt and ultimately defeat and destruction in 494 BCE. Though the outlines of this history have long been known to classical scholars, the mechanisms of rise and subsequent fall (and of the transfer of cultural and scientific centre from Ionia to Attica), have remained obscure. Modern archaeological research, combined with insights from textual sources, now offers the opportunity for a richer insight into the industrial and knowledge economy of this critical pre-modern era for the foundation of European economic and scientific principles. The THALES project aims to embed archaeological, geomorphological and textual data from current projects on the Milesian peninsula, Turkey, into wider academic and societal debates on economic production, landscape change and philosophical reflection in the Greek world between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The overall objectives of this project are: 1. to evaluate the effectiveness of new methodological and technological approaches to the characterisation of objects and their mode of production; 2. to apply models of landscape reconstruction to a region of critical economic production to help explain territorial inequalities in the ancient world; and 3. to review, re-assess and reconsider the context of the origins of the earliest Western philosophical texts (the pre-Socratics) in the light of the primary archaeological material relating to economic and landscape dynamics.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union