Around 2500 BCE, Mohenjo-daro, a city of the Indus civilization in today's Pakistan, had grid-planned streets, fired-brick houses with bathing areas and a covered drainage system. Curiously, archaeologists have found no obvious palace or temple. A highly organized city, and we still don't know who ran it.
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.