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Mike Parker Pearson suggests Stonehenge was built, or rebuilt, to revere the dead (7 June, p 11) . I suppose that there is no possibility that the buried ashes were the result of industrial accidents during its construction? Such losses would be likely in such a major operation – and this would be consistent with …

You report problems with food supply (14 June, p 28) . In recent years UK farmers have been encouraged by governments to turn farming land to "leisure pursuits" and been paid not to grow food, in order to reduce food surpluses. Such policies need changing. The public could be encouraged to grow their own vegetables …

Sally Palmer's fascinating and somewhat ghoulish account of vast cannibalistic locust swarms (31 May, p 42) makes one realise how nature is ever full of surprises. But the spectacle of vast hordes of these little winged Hannibal Lecters should evoke more than morbid fascination or dread: here is a possible opportunity. Insects are a neglected …

You edited my letter on food and fuel (31 May, p 23) , perhaps thinking that my statement "A farmer using liquid fuels is at least forty times as productive..." must be exaggerated. Let me expand. Before about 1750, when the Industrial Revolution began, farmers depended on human and animal muscle. Now, in all but …

Marc Thioux has a good point that in certain cases savant skills need some developmental honing (7 June, p 10) . In the case of the musical savant Derek Paravicini, the music teacher Adam Ockelford, of the then Royal National Institute for the Blind, spent 18 years as his mentor to develop his astounding musical …

It is true, of course, that we possess nothing unique anatomically, physiologically or biochemically (24 May, p 28) . What we do enjoy is a unique combination of features: our brain, capable of invention, deception and confabulation; our hands with their amazingly dextrous opposable thumbs; and our voice boxes with all the possibilities that Christine …

If nothing else, Christine Kenneally's article "So you think you're unique" (24 May, p 28) demonstrates our unique ability to assume that we are unique, and that the others, to their credit, overlap us in some degree. But suppose that this inquiry had been undertaken by geese. They would find that although humans can swim, …

Paul Marks points out the significant risks posed by the US fitting many more naval ships with highly enriched uranium-fuelled reactors in response to the rising cost of oil (14 June, p 24) . But there is a third way. Naval vessels can be powered quite effectively using very low enriched uranium fuel, and run …

A. C. Grayling identifies contradictory human endeavours, such as constructing weapons of war and rescue work (31 May, p 52) . The underlying difficulty is that research in one field can often be put to "good" or "bad" uses: in microbiology, for example, to warn us of an influenza epidemic or to produce organisms for …

I was very interested and pleased to read Debora MacKenzie's informative article on the global food crisis (14 June, p 28) . I do feel, though, that she overstates the case against biofuels as a technology for the future. Crops such as wheat and rice produce over 3 tonnes of straw per hectare – which …

As another atheist without qualms, it worries me that Lawrence Krauss so badly misses the point in his diatribe against religious belief (7 June, p 50) . It does no good to caricature the "intellectually lazy creations of fundamentally ignorant minds". Religious people don't merely see the heavens as "more intimate and more magical"; they …

Owen Flanagan's description of my book The Political Mind: Why you can't understand 21st-century American politics with an 18th-century brain , (31 May, p 48) left much to be desired. The book has two parts: one scientific and one pointing out the political consequences of the science. There is a received view of mind, absorbed …