The modern human coordination miracle

Thanks to Ed Yong several people on twitter have encountered my post, The point mutation which made humanity. My broader concern which I was attempting to highlight is that too often when we attempt to ascertain the origins of modern human success in relation to our archaic cousins/ancestors we presume that there must be a qualitative species-wide difference. So, for example, it used to be bandied about that a large effect mutation conferred upon the ancestors of modern humans the ability to speak with the fluency which we take for granted. For various reasons that seems less and less plausible. But even my thin knowledge of archaeology does indicate that what remains plausible is that modern humans exhibited a level of scale in their group-size, as well as extended force projection, and the ability to rapidly traverse difficult territory. It was modern humans who pushed the frontier to Australia and ...