In 2018, an international team published in Science the results of a LiDAR survey, a plane-mounted laser that can 'see' the ground through the forest canopy, covering more than 2,000 km² of northern Guatemala. The result: over 61,000 ancient structures hidden by the forest, from houses and palaces to raised causeways and fortifications. The Maya lowlands may have held several million people in the Late Classic period, far more than once thought.
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.