Since the oldest unearthed stone tools in Pliocene until the earliest parietal art in the Upper Paleolithic the archaeological record documents a diverse collection of archaic hominin fossils and sites. From this wide array, those sites are selected, which help us to illustrate some important trends in the evolution of human cognition and “modern mind”. One line of inquiry asks, whether this was a slow and non-linear process or a sudden cognitive leap, while the other questions, how is it even possible to infer about the mental lives of extinct human species on the basis of mute material remains? With the help of neuroscientific and psychological theories of emotions, cognition, memory, learning, social behavior, language, music and art this work interprets some of the most prominent paleolithic finds, like the oldest stone tools, traces of group hunting and scavenging, medical care, fire use, production of complex tools, art, burials and evidence of symbolic behavior. This overview clearly shows, that the paleolithic cognitive evolution trends were divergent, manifold and codependent with long-term, slow and complex sociocultural dynamics. This chain of events is more in accordance with the hypothesis of slowly unravelling cognitive evolution than with the idea of a cognitive leap.
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