Graeber and Wengrow note an early "pattern of discovery" around play and art (or, more broadly, something we might call frivolity)
500: "Ceramics were first invented, long before the Neolithic, to make figurines, miniature models of animals and other subjects, and only later [to make] cooking and storage vessels. Mining is first attested as a way of obtaining minerals to be used as pigments, with the extraction of metals for industrial use coming only much later. Mesoamerican societies never employed wheeled transport; but we know they were familiar with spokes, wheels, and axles since they made toy versions of them for children. Greek scientists famously came up with the principle of the steam engine, but only employed it to make temple doors that appeared to open of their own accord, or other theatrical illusion. Chinese societies, equally famously, first employed gunpowder for fireworks."
the "zone of ritual play constituted both a scientific laboratory and, for any given society, a repertory of knowledge and techniques which might or might not be applied to pragmatic problems"
this also contributes to "social creativity" ("that zone of ritual play has also acted as a site of social experimentation--even, in some ways, as an encyclopaedia of social possibilities," 501)
do social possibilities also, in turn, fuel more innovation? Graeber and Wengrow ask it this way: "is there a positive correlation between what is usually called 'gender equality' (which might better be termed, simply, 'women's freedom') and the degree of innovation in a given society?"