In Italy, flint flakes about 200,000 years old carry traces of birch tar, an adhesive made by heating bark. Producing it requires controlling the heat. Neanderthals used it to fix stone points onto handles: one of the oldest human-made materials, long before chemistry existed.
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.