A history of the world told by animals — and it changes everything

“Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man – let me offer you a definition – is the storytelling animal”, wrote Graham Swift in Waterland. His oft-quoted line suggests that what sets mankind apart is the impulse to turn memory into story and story into history — a uniquely human way of making sense of the world.

Swift is right in the narrow, human sense. History only exists when someone writes it down or tells it aloud. Animals evolve, migrate, fight, hide, nurture, adapt and form alliances across millions of years, yet none of that appears in the historical record for the obvious reason: they have no spoken archive. They might have been comparing notes among themselves for ages — perhaps they still do — but humans have never been able to understand, record or translate whatever has passed between them.

Will Shin, an accomplished scholar and academic, responds with an irresistible thought experiment: what if Earth has always contained more storytellers than we realised?

Animal Intelligence: The Book of Forgotten History, his beguiling work of illustrated fiction and the first volume of a planned trilogy, imagines that every animal that ever lived carries a memory of the world. These memories stretch from the first oceans to a distant post-human age and create a vast, informal record of how life unfolded long before humans began chiselling marks into stone. Shin proposes that animals observed everything — the leaps, the failures, the quiet triumphs, the collapses — and now offer their version of the story we thought we understood.

“The history written from the memory of wild animals is never precise,” he notes in the preamble. “Readers raised on human history may find these events tangled and flawed…But that doesn’t make these records meaningless.”

This premise becomes the foundation for a philosophical yet accessible hybrid work that reimagines human history — and the future of knowledge — through the eyes of animals. Designed for both adults and younger readers, it uses narrative, gentle illustration and fable to explore large ideas without heaviness. More than a standalone book, it opens the Animal Intelligence series: a long-term knowledge project that approaches long-termism and post-human thought from non-human perspectives. Future volumes will extend this framework to examine how animals interpret human knowledge, technology and institutions, offering an alternative way of thinking about intelligence, memory and the world to come.

The narrative moves across ten eras of Earth’s past — the book calls them epochs — beginning with the Paleozoic’s “Age of Arrogance” and its star, Spriggina, a smug organism with more self-belief than body mass. The Mesozoic becomes the “Age of Wars”, where dinosaurs pursue strategies that work until they very much do not. The Cenozoic “Age of Myths” sees early humans forging alliances with animals that unravel for reasons neither side fully grasps. Medieval Europe becomes the “Age of Mirrors”, witnessed by cats with sharp opinions and rats with even sharper ones. Later chapters follow animals carried across seas during exploration, animals watching industrial modernity with a sinking feeling, and animals in the contemporary world adopting new vantage points as quiet observers. The final “Age of Remembrance”, set in a far future, wonders how the planet might remember us once humanity has stepped aside.

Throughout, animals speak with plain, unfussy and, dare I say it, believable voices. Whales attempt diplomacy with humans. Horses and hawks survey empires like creatures who have sat through one cavalry campaign too many. Cows cross the Atlantic with stoic acceptance. Their memories describe how intelligence evolves, loses its footing, tries again and occasionally takes decisions that are imaginative at best and ill-advised at worst.

The book blends fable, natural history, comic-style illustration and gentle philosophy with a mischievous sense of humour, and its illustrations — created by Alice Shin, the author’s sister — give the story much of its warmth. Her drawings carry expression, timing and small jokes that guide readers through vast stretches of time without losing them. Panels soften large ideas, allow jokes to land, and help readers intuit emotional changes in the story. They support the narrative with the lightness needed for younger readers while offering adults enough detail to linger on.

Together, the sibling pair form a formidable creative duo. Will studied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania and International Development at Harvard, and his background shapes the structure and ambition of the animal-centred universe he is building. Alice’s training in art and linguistics gives the illustrations their clarity, movement and quiet humour. Their publishing imprint, STUDENT B, brings these approaches together into a coherent long-term project.

The Animal Intelligence series unfolds from this foundation. This first volume lays the historical and conceptual groundwork, concentrating on memory, perspective and the long relationships between species. Subsequent volumes follow as direct sequels, turning to the present to explore how animals live today, how they study and evaluate human knowledge, and how these assessments shape their views of the future. Animals emerge as long-term observers who have watched human civilisation from the edges and now choose to speak.

A broad readership can move through this book with ease. Adults who enjoy natural history, world-building or philosophical storytelling will find depth without difficulty. Teen readers who like illustrated or myth-shaped worlds will fall into its rhythm quickly. Families can read it together across ages, and younger readers absorb the emotional content carried by the animals even when the larger ideas run beneath the surface. Educators, museums, wildlife centres and STEAM programmes, meanwhile, will gain a simple way to introduce ideas about evolution, knowledge, environmental philosophy and long-term thinking. The book, out this week, reads as though animals have been watching us with patient amusement for far longer than we suspected — and have decided it might be time, very politely, to set the record straight.

Review by Timothy Arden for Belters News