Anaximander (610 - 546 BC)

Anaximander (

 c. 610 – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia (in modern-day Turkey). He belonged to the Milesian schooland learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he countedAnaximenes and, arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils.

Olympiads -An Olympiad (Greek: Ὀλυμπιάς,olympiás) is a period of four years associated with the Olympic Games of the Ancient Greeks. During theHellenistic period, beginning withEphorus, it was used as a calendar epoch. By this reckoning, the first Olympiad lasted from the summer of 776 BC to that of 772 BC. By extrapolation to the Gregorian calendar, the 4th year of the 698th Olympiad begins in (Northern-Hemisphere) mid-summer 2016. 
Anaximander's theories were influenced by the Greek mythical tradition, and by some ideas of Thales – the father of philosophy – as well as by observations made by older civilizations in the East (especially by the Babylonian astrologers). 

Map of Anaximander's universe

Anaximander's bold use of non-mythological explanatory hypotheses considerably distinguishes him from previous cosmology writers such asHesiod. It confirms that pre-Socratic philosophers were making an early effort to demythify physical processes. His major contribution to history was writing the oldest prose document about the Universeand the origins of life; for this he is often called the "Father of Cosmology" and founder of astronomy. However, pseudo-Plutarch states that he still viewed celestial bodies as deities

Illustration of Anaximander's models of the universe. On the left, daytime in summer; on the right, nighttime in winter.

Bertrand Russell in the History of Western Philosophy interprets Anaximander's theories as an assertion of the necessity of an appropriate balance between earth, fire, and water, all of which may be independently seeking to aggrandize their proportions relative to the others. Anaximander seems to express his belief that a natural order ensures balance between these elements, that where there was fire, ashes (earth) now exist.^[53] His Greek peers echoed this sentiment with their belief in natural boundaries beyond which not even the gods could operate.