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"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.

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 …

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 …

Using mass spectrometers in space missions to seek molecules with a high "assembly index" – an idea that springs from the new Assembly Theory of life that you reported on – is an interesting development in the search for extraterrestrial life ( 24 June, p 32 ). Threshold values derived from life on Earth should …

From Rick McRae , Canberra, Australia You reported on research showing that "North American wildfires may be creating clouds over Europe". It is said that this could constitute a new climate feedback loop. But there is more to it ( 24 June, p 15 ). For decades, a wide-ranging group of researchers in a global …

Irrespective of the ethics, Henry Cort's patent for a new steel production process would have been legally valid, despite the idea being taken from Black metallurgists in Jamaica ( 15 July, p 14 ). Britain's Statute of Monopolies 1623 is generally treated as the foundation of the modern patent system. It was well established that …