Around 3000 BCE, the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, in today's Iraq, was probably home to 40,000 to 80,000 people behind a wall roughly 9 km long. Some of the oldest known written tablets were found there. Nothing else of the time came close: Uruk is often called the first true city.
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.