In Greek mythology, the king of Athens rescued the children of the city taken to Delos to be a sacrifice to the Minotaur by slaying the beast and escaping onboard a ship. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate him by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos.
After hundreds of years of maintenance to the ship, a question emerged: if each individual piece of the Ship of Theseus were replaced, was it still the same ship?
This simple question has gone on to become one of the most well-known thought exercises in human history that leads to additional questions such as what is more important when looking at the continued history of something, the form or the components?