Mesopotamians counted in base 60, a number divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, which made dividing things easy. Greek astronomers adopted the system, which handed us 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute and 360 degrees in a circle. Your watch still speaks Babylonian.
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.