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I think Mark Pickin is wrong to conclude that Stone Age seafarers wouldn't venture out to sea unless they could see indications of land ahead. Stone Age Polynesians travelled thousands of miles between islands, navigating by wave patterns and other means. Similarly, early Viking seafarers are known to have found Iceland, Greenland and later the …

Your article and the many letters on solving the mystery of Stone Age seafarers take a rationalist approach to the discovery of Malta from Sicily. Accident and emotion are at least as likely explanations. Stone Age fishers plying coastal waters off Sicily would have occasionally been caught in storms and blown out to sea. Survivors …

"In the eyes of the beholders" is one of the best articles that I have read in Â鶹´«Ã½ . And, because it mentions information often, I am moved to write that the Greeks had at least two words for knowledge: doxa and gnosis . Through doxa , we come to conclusions based upon information. …

Your article on "the pluriverse" was interesting, but I'm not convinced. In particular, if Qbists and enactivists propose that the universe arises as a result of all the living or agentic observers in it, the question then is: what was going on before there were any? The article hints at extending the scope of agency …

Chris Stokel-Walker's piece, "A very serious guide to buying a robot butler", took me back to some research I carried out 12 years ago with some 80 pupils, who were about 12 years old, about their visions of what robots would do in the future. Domestic duties featured large in their responses, but on being …

Once again, the so-called hard problem of human consciousness raises its head in the piece "Unlocking consciousness". But is there really a problem? Can we really say that a dog or an ape is not conscious in the way humans are? They feel fear, affection and grief, just as we do ( 28 March, p …

Can species evolve fast enough to survive climate change? The answer is no! What has been observed by these researchers is an example of ecological genetics in action. The genetic polymorphism within the population means some individuals will already possess the necessary genes to enable them to survive climate change. The number of these individuals …

I enjoyed Michael Le Page's article about fast evolution in scarlet monkeyflowers. But I don't think we should call this evolution. It risks giving people who deny the need to take action against climate change a further opportunity to misrepresent the science. The article also notes this may be temporary, as the emergence of drought …

I have appointed myself PR adviser to Tyrannosaurus . The name is rubbish. Tyrants are cruel, arrogant guys who make decent people's life a misery – lots of them are still around, alas. There is zero evidence that T. rex ever did that. All they ever wanted was breakfast, lunch and dinner, and some odd …

Katia Moskvitch is at the firm Quantum Machines (28 March, p 12).