How humans wised up

Human
BBC2

All over the African continent are to be found shell beads, tinted with red ochre, that date from around 100,000 BC. According to Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of Human – the BBC’s exciting new series on the origins and rise of Homo sapiens – these shells are the key to human development. We don’t know what they meant to the people who first strung them and shared them, but they represent one of the key attributes in our steady climb to the top of the evolutionary greasy pole: cooperation.

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