The traditional subject matter of anthropology (from the Greek anthropos, “human being,” and log-, “study of”) has been the study of nonwestern, “exotic,” and “nonliterate” peoples. As in other social sciences and humanities, the beginnings of western anthropology go back to Greco-Roman antiquity. It was in the wake of the Greek colonization of the Mediterranean world, commencing around 750 bce, that questions arose regarding the history, the inhabitants, and the fauna and flora of the newly discovered lands. This intellectual interest reached its first peak in the works of Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 550–490 bce) and Herodotus of Halicarnassus (ca. 480–425 bce), often considered the pioneers of western ethnography, and eventually led to a well-developed body of doctrines that constitutes the classical heritage of anthropology.