Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 2 -- Greek Philosophers
Thales' disciple Anaximander of Miletus (611-547 BC) went a
further step, seeing the primordial substance as “apeiron,” a
substance less tangible. Realizing that the earth was curved,
Anaximander concluded the earth’s shape to be that of a cylinder,
but one placed within in a celestial sphere.
To the right, Anaximander holding a sundial
Anaximenes of Miletus (585-525 BC), said to be the first to
distinguish between stars and planets, argued that world is
composed of neither water nor apeiron, but of air itself.
Compressed, it becomes water and earth.
Anaximenes reverted to the disk cosmology, stating that the sun
never goes under the earth, but circles it laterally, sometimes
obscured by higher parts. The sea is,
The source of the water and the source of the wind. For neither could the force of the wind
blowing outwards from within come into being without the great main sea, nor the streams or
rivers, nor the showery water of the sky, but the mighty main is the begetter of clouds and
winds and rivers.
Anaximenes explained landforms as the product of surficial collapse, a rational fitting well with the
Arcadian multitude of caves. Water percolates the earth, as "in certain caves water drips down."
Not satisfied with explanations reliant on a supernatural where the eye can not peer, the Three
Milesians proposed physical, autonomous theory. If Bertrand Russell’s reflection, “It is not what
a man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it,” in A History of
Western Philosophy (1945) yet stands, the field of natural science was born in Milet.
Underground rivers (or anything physical, for that matter) are not manifestations of arbitrary
powers, but are orderly, consistent and objective outcomes of natural rules.
Xenophanes of Colophon (570-470 BC) merits mention in our
chronology.
The sea is the source of the waters and the source of the winds.
Without the great sea, not from the clouds could come the flowing
rivers.
Xenophanes was onto something remarkable, that the waters of the
earth are interdependent. He, of course, wasn't the first to recognize
the link, but he was among the first to record the tie as a natural
dependency, not as divine whim.
As we shall note in Chapter 4, The Cross, however, subsequent theological doctrine and
uncritical observation will for another two millennia cite similar declarations to justify the uphill flow
of underground rivers.
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