At Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, thousands of people lived about 9,000 years ago in houses packed wall to wall, with no streets between them. People walked across the rooftops and climbed down into their homes by ladder. The dead were often buried beneath the floors: families literally slept above their ancestors.
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.