Recovered in 1901 from a Greek shipwreck, the Antikythera mechanism dates to the 2nd or 1st century BCE. Its dozens of bronze gears tracked the positions of the Sun and Moon, predicted eclipses and even followed the Olympic Games cycle. Nothing so complex is known for more than a thousand years afterward.
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.