In 2022, an international team analyzed DNA from people buried in 1338–1339 near Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, where gravestones mentioned a 'pestilence'. The bacterium they found sits at the root of the lineage that caused the Black Death. The scourge that ravaged Europe had started in Central Asia about eight years earlier.
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.