The current historical consensus is that Thales was born in the city of Miletus around the mid 620s BC. Miletus was an ancient Greek Ionian city on the western coast of Asia Minor (in what is today Aydin Province of Turkey), near the mouth of the Maeander River.ristotle reported Thales' hypothesis that the originating principle of nature and the nature of matter was a single material substance: water. Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology.