From stone tools to fMRI, studying human cognitive evolution when the mind doesn't fossilize

Successive cognitive upswings could have been decisive in our ancestors' ability to develop increasingly complex tool systems and functional forms of communication. The recent incursion of neuroarchaeology experiments focusing on lithic tool-based stimuli has intensified discussions on the brain regions of interest that could have played a role in the development of the modern brain. Executive functions, language, and technical reasoning are now being investigated. The question here is not so much which cognitive function deserves the most attention by its more significant likelihood of explaining the cognitive enhancement that took place in our species during the Paleolithic. Instead, it is a question of why certain brain areas, such as the frontal or parietal lobes, are considered regions of interest, and how neuroarchaeology studies them, presented here in a non-expert-friendly manner. Between methodological challenges and new hypotheses, the incursion of modern technologies such as neuroimaging and eye-tracking into paleoanthropological debates seems to open up new scientific opportunities.