Finding the Cognitive Neurocognitive Core of Paleolithic Stoneknapping: an ALE meta-analysis

Summary

Pioneering neuroimaging studies have allowed the analysis of the cognitive basis of stoneknapping and lithic technology to develop rapidly over the past 40 years. While these studies have helped identify the neuroanatomy of stoneknapping, interpretation of the cognitive significance of these results is still in its early days. To provide a comparative baseline between brain activity in stoneknapping and the rest of cognitive neuroscience, I performed an Activation Likelihood Estimate (ALE) Meta-analysis of Stout’s (2000, 2007, 2008, 2011) PET and fMRI studies of knappers replicating Early Stone Age (ESA) technologies with 322 neuroimaging studies. I also compared the identified networks with 9721 studies in the Neurosynth database. The ALE meta-analysis identified two networks involved in the replication of ESA technology. The first, including regions of the left and right frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes is involved in reaching, grasping, and low level action planning. Evolutionarily, this region plays an important role in extractive foraging abilities amongst primates. The second network, involving areas of the frontal and temporal lobes, is involved in social cognition. The interaction between these two regions may have altered the computational capacities of the core reaching/grasping system, enhancing social learning abilities necessary for Late Acheulean technology.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Cognitive Archaeology

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