Letters archive

"Rethinking civilisation" recognises that the story of the superiority and inevitability of hierarchical social organisation is a fiction, but without daring to admit that this must be because the science on the subject has been compromised by its political and economic allegiances; a history written by the winners ( 1 July, p 32 ). Perhaps …

When it comes to discussions about the invention of farming, Australia needs a mention. Here, Indigenous people domesticated the entire landscape. Pleistocene Aboriginal people built vast prey farms (using fire to do so) with herds of grazing kangaroos and constructed massive eel farms.

Could civilisation have been kick-started by an infectious agent? Toxoplasma , carried by cats, causes mice to lose their fear of felines. Some studies indicate this parasite may be connected to behavioural effects in humans. Is it possible that a microbe emerged 10,000 years ago that changed our behaviour in a way that created civilisation?

Every once in a while, an article appears that changes my way of thinking about things. This was the case with Thomas Lewton's interview of Sara Imari Walker. I have puzzled over the origins of life on many occasions and found the prevailing orthodoxies unsatisfactory. Walker's Assembly Theory shone a completely new light on the …

Thank you for your timely, urgent and compelling leader on net zero, in which you conclude that we must cut emissions now and fast to avoid climate tragedy. Where better to start than with the cessation of the generation of cryptocurrency? The immediate end of mining cryptocurrency that relies on "proof of work", and that …

From 1 July, p 22

When it comes to the climate challenge posed by land use for farming, note that three-quarters of all farmland is devoted to pasture or growing crops to feed animals, plus two-thirds of the farming carbon footprint and three-quarters of food waste is due to meat products. A switch to plant-based diets would, by some accounts …

You report on Earth's lowest relative gravity spot, just south of India. This brought to mind an account of a UK equivalent: the Warlingham gravity anomaly in Surrey. This was found in the 1950s , with interest in the press and some reports implying a complete absence of gravity ( 1 July, p 13 ). …

Thanks to Jason Arunn Murugesu for alerting us to the sale of butterflies on eBay. Given the vast decline of these and other insects due to climate change, pesticides, agribusinesses and other things, no one should be able to make money out of killing and selling butterflies. It doesn't matter if only 2 per cent …

It is with dismay that I read Sadiq Khan's commentary, in which he says that he had no idea of the scale of air pollution's impact on health until he was diagnosed with asthma. When we vote for our representatives, we expect them to know about these issues and do something about them. They shouldn't …

I don't understand why there is so much worry about weightlessness during space travel. Getting to the moon takes just a few days, and for longer trips there is a solution. Tie two space capsules together with a tether 2 kilometres long and set the whole turning, like a gaucho's bolas, at a rate of …

I have never been so incensed or upset than by your editorial hailing the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope's findings of distant galaxies. How can the cost be justified when, under our feet, Earth's ecosystems are being destroyed by human actions ( Leader, 17 June ).