Even at the lowest Ice Age sea levels, Australia was never joined to Asia: reaching it meant crossing stretches of open water tens of kilometers wide. Yet people were living there at least 50,000 years ago, possibly 65,000. Deliberate seafaring, more than 40,000 years before writing was invented.
Around 2300 BCE, Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, became high priestess of the Moon god at Ur. She composed hymns to the goddess Inanna and put her name to them. She is the oldest person identified as the author of a literary work, about 1,500 years before Homer.
Squeeze Earth's 4.5 billion years into a single 24-hour day. Homo sapiens shows up around 11:59:54 p.m., roughly six seconds before midnight. All of written history, from Sumerian tablets to today, fits into the final tenth of a second. A cosmic blink.