in trying to trace the origins of culture--"complex symbolic human behavior"--Graeber and Wengrow point out "the expressive use of shell and ochre" found in "[r]ock shelters around the coastlands of South Africa [dating to] around 80,000 BC"
"a cave site on the coast of Kenya called Panga ya Saidi is yielding evidence of shell beads and worked pigments stretching back 60,000 years" (84)
then the "Upper Paleolithic Revolution" (roughly 40000-45000 BC), though Graeber and Wengrow are suspicious of the notion that this represents a "sudden creative efflorescence" ("this is most likely an illusion, created by biases in our evidence")