Around 240 BCE, Eratosthenes noticed that at noon on the solstice the Sun cast no shadow at Syene, while in Alexandria it made an angle of about 7°, one-fiftieth of a circle. Knowing the distance between the two cities, he worked out Earth's circumference. His result came remarkably close to the real 40,000 km.
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.