That the historical Buddha was born perhaps as early as Thales of Miletus, at the time of the birth of Greek philosophy, and at any rate, before Plato. His traditional Therevadan birth date is 624 BC, though he may have been born as late as 500 BC or even later. The birth date for Thales is the same year, 624 BC. Plato was born 428 BC or a few years later. For discussion of the different attempts at a chronology to work out when he was born, see Notes on the Dates of the Buddha Shåkyamuni
Lumbini, birthplace of Buddha Shakyamuni - rediscovered by Nepali archaeologists at the end of the nineteenth century when they unearthed a pillar that King Ashoka placed here.
- Lumbini - Wikipedia
- Lumbini, the Birthplace of the Lord Buddha
- Lumbini the Birthplace of Buddhism, Spiritual places in Nepal
The earliest date matches the birth of Thales of Miletus 624BC - this is the birth of Greek philosophy - before Pythagoras, never mind Plato and Aristotle. The range of dates spans pretty much the entire range of early Greek philosophy. At any date Buddha’s birth, and quite probably his paranirvana or death, predates Plato who was born in the late fifth century BC, 428 BC or maybe a year or two later, up to 423 BC.
I find that rather striking, and surprising.
Interestingly we know far more about Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings than we do about Thales, although Northern India didn’t have writing at the time of Buddha, while Greece did have writing of course. India has a long tradition of memorizing texts accurately, from before it had writing. Writing was introduced to Northern India a century or two after Buddha, as it had it by the time of King Ashoka, a couple of centuries or so BC.
Note, later Buddhists sutras do mention writing. But the earliest ones, the ones that may have been memorized since the time of the Buddha himself, they don’t according to the Pali scholars who have studied this (the Pali canon is vast like an encyclopedia, it also includes some texts that all scholars recognize as later but most of the texts are very early). For more detail, see Robert Walker's answer to Was Buddha literate?
Anyway let’s have a look at a few of the things we know about Thales, who just possibly might have been a contemporary of Shakyamuni Buddha in Greece..
Thales was a geometer as well as a philosopher, and Thales' theorem is attributed to him - that the angle at B in this diagram is always a right angle where AC is a diameter.
He may also be responsible for the Intercept theorem.
He is reported as having measured the height of the pyramids by measuring their shadows (somehow, there are various ways he could have done it). He might have done it empirically or semi empirically by noticing that at certain times of day the length of an object’s shadow is equal to its height, or he may have used more elaborate reasoning based on similar triangles.
He was also keen on astronomy. If Herodotus’ account is valid, he is also the first person in recorded history to successfully predict a solar eclipse. Eclipse of Thales - Wikipedia on May 28, 585 BC (probably it involved a measure of luck if the story is true).
Not much is known about his philosophy, because his work hasn’t survived, so what we know is based on what other philosophers like Aristotle wrote about him. But he probably thought that everything is made up of water as a fundamental substance and that our Earth is flat.
That may have been revolutionary at his time. Sambursky wrote.
“It was Thales who first conceived the principle of explaining the multitude of phenomena by a small number of hypotheses for all the various manifestations of matter.”
Later Greek philosophers were to run with this idea, which went through many stages eventually leading to early ideas of the atomic nature of matater. Plato recorded as an anecdote about him, that he fell into a well while gazing at the stars, see The Astrologer who Fell into a Well
For more about him:
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