In the 1st century CE, the engineer Hero of Alexandria described a temple device: a coin dropped into a slot landed on a tray, tipping a lever that released a measure of holy water. The same inventor described the aeolipile, a sphere spun by jets of steam. Steam power and coin-operated machines, already in antiquity.
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.