Neanderthal skulls show an average brain volume of about 1,400 to 1,500 cm³, slightly more than people today. Their brains were simply shaped differently, more elongated. The stooped-brute image largely comes from an early 20th-century reconstruction based on the skeleton of an old man bent by arthritis.
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.