Mind-Benders of Greek & Roman History
A Greek argued humans came from fish about 2,400 years before Darwin
In the sixth century BCE, Anaximander of Miletus proposed that the first living things arose in water and that human beings originally developed from fish-like creatures — reasoning that a helpless human infant could never have survived on its own at the very beginning. This early notion of descent from other animals predates Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859 CE) by roughly 2,400 years.
How we know
Anaximander c. 610–546 BCE (active c. 560 BCE); the fish-origin view is reported by Censorinus, Plutarch and Aetius; Darwin's Origin of Species 1859 CE. Gap ≈ 560 + 1859 = 2,419 yrs.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.