Miletus

Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia near the mouth of the Maeander River, in present day Turkey, and a major center of trade, culture and innovation from the Bronze Age through the Roman period. It was the home of the Milesian school of philosophy, whose thinkers Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes pioneered rational inquiry into the natural world in the 6th century BC, and of the urban planner Hippodamus, credited with the grid plan design later applied across the Greek world; Miletus also founded dozens of colonies around the Mediterranean and Black Sea, but harbor silting progressively cut it off from the sea, leaving its ruins by the Ottoman period roughly 10 kilometers inland and the city abandoned.