Ancient Greek temples and statues were painted in bright colors: tanned skin, patterned clothing, colored eyes and lips. Traces of pigment, often invisible to the naked eye, show up under ultraviolet or infrared light, and researchers such as Vinzenz Brinkmann have reconstructed these colors since the 2000s. The cult of pure white marble comes mostly from the Renaissance and 18th-century neoclassicism, which admired works the centuries had washed clean.
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.