Tomatoes, potatoes, maize, chili peppers, cocoa and vanilla all come from the Americas. Before the exchanges that began in 1492, Italian cooking had no tomato sauce, and Indian or Thai curries had no chili. In the other direction, horses, wheat and coffee reached the New World. Many 'traditional' cuisines are under 500 years old.
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.