Understanding the evolution of advanced cognition requires explaining how it could have gradually evolved through selection acting on heritable variations in simpler cognitive mechanisms. Making use of a previously proposed theory, I will explain how the evolution of cognitive abilities can be captured by the fine-tuning of basic learning and chunking mechanisms. Specifically, I will demonstrate how the process by which elements are combined into chunks and associated with other chunks, or elements, may be critical for what the brain can do, and that it must be fine-tuned to ecological conditions in order to produce adaptive behaviors.