In Xianrendong Cave, China, ceramic pot fragments have been dated to about 20,000 years ago, in the depths of the Ice Age. They were made by hunter-gatherers, some 10,000 years before the first fields. The pots were probably used for cooking: cuisine came before agriculture.
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.