Kneeling in the streetcorner dirt in 1919, Shapley knew he was face-to-face with a "living fossil society". An ancient civilisation, epochs older than our own, and, in silent ways, more experienced. Mapping galaxies may locate humanity in space, Shapley realised, but considering the ant gives us "orientation in time". Human civilisation may seem ancient from the perspective of our fleeting lives, but this is a limited outlook. Here, in the dirt, was a society unfathomably older than our own: revealing we are but newcomers to the game.