Scientific American's recent article "The Origin of Human Creativity Was Surprisingly Complex" nicely summarizes archaeological findings suggesting that the use of symbols, complex tools, chemical compounds, and containers at least 77,000 years ago with some inventions happening before we even evolved into modern day humans. Of course, we've been making stone tools and fire long before we even evolved into homo sapien sapien around 100,000 years ago, but older studies suggested we plateaued for a long time and didn't begin this kind of complex creative thinking until about 40,000 years ago. It is an interesting and easy to read introduction to more recent studies on the issue.
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