The Ancient Greeks have a legend that Thales of Miletus (600 B.C.) was the first man to reason. We know very little about his original work in astronomy but we know that he had been a trader and therefore must have come in contact with Babylonian and Egyptian thought in his business trips. That he had been interested in astronomy is indicated by an anecdote from his life: Plato tells us that he once fell into a open well while looking up at the stars, and that a Thracian slave girl had laughed at him, saying, "he was so absorbed in the heavens that he missed what was beneath his feet."