In the 1950s, excavations at Helgö, near Stockholm, uncovered a small bronze Buddha statuette made around the 6th century in the Kashmir region. It lay in an old Scandinavian trading center, active before and into the early Viking Age. How did it get there? Through exchange networks linking the Baltic to Asia.
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.