Xenophanes
c. 570 BCE–c. 478 BCE · Colophon
Itinerant Ionian poet-philosopher who criticized anthropomorphic conceptions of the gods and spoke of 'one greatest god' — a critique of popular polytheism (often read as henotheism rather than full monotheism); by ancient tradition linked to the Eleatics as a forerunner of Parmenides.
Did you know?
He Saw Seashells on Mountains and Deduced the Sea Once Covered the Land
In the 6th-5th century BCE Xenophanes of Colophon noticed fossil shells and the imprints of sea creatures embedded high in inland rock, and concluded that the land there had once lain under water. He read fossils as evidence of the Earth's history more than two thousand years before geology existed as a science.
How we know
Xenophanes c.570-478 BCE. Ancient reports (via Hippolytus) say he observed fossil shells and fish impressions inland and inferred past submersion; cited as the earliest known use of fossils as evidence for Earth's history. Modern stratigraphic geology: 18th-19th c. CE.
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ColophonIonia (Asia Minor)
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Colophon
Colophon was one of the Ionian Greek cities, inland from the coast of Lydia in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). It was the birthplace of the pre-Socratic philosopher and poet Xenophanes, known for his critique of anthropomorphic depictions of the gods, and of the Hellenistic poet and physician Nicander.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Xenophanes’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Hindu world
Egyptian world
Mesopotamian world
Scientists
Jewish world
Buddhist world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.