How is it that Miletus, a city nearly 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the sea, was once a great seafaring city and an important Aegean port? The answer comes in the form of the Meander river, which over the course of the past 3,600 years (or so) has left large deposits of silt, gradually building up the shoreline and distancing the city from what was once its most important resource- the sea. Thought to be the oldest of the Ionian cities, Miletus was home not only to explorers and traders, but to a significant intellectual community, including residents such as Anaximenes, who contemplated the heavens, Anaximander, the “father of geography”, Thales, a pioneer in astronomy and geometry who calculated the height of the pyramids in Egypt by measuring their shadow, and Hippodamus, the ancestor of modern city planners, whose earliest work you can inspect here, as you wander about Miletus’ organized, grid-like pattern of streets.