Introduced under the Sui dynasty around the year 600 and only abolished in 1905, the imperial examinations opened government service, in principle, to any man who mastered the Confucian classics, whatever his birth. Candidates were shut away for days in tiny individual cells: the examination hall in Nanjing had more than 20,000 of them. Passing at the highest level was extremely rare, but it opened the doors to the empire's elite.
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.