Near present-day St. Louis, Cahokia was, around 1050-1150, the largest settlement north of Mexico, with an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. Its centerpiece, Monks Mound, is the largest earthwork of the pre-Columbian Americas: 30 meters high on a base of more than 5 hectares. The site counts some 120 mounds in all. The city was already largely abandoned by 1400, long before Europeans arrived.
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.