Arks of the Mind Animals and the Deep History of Imagination
This project explores the deep history of the human imagination, asking how long relationships with animals helped shape the emergence of the human mind.
Bringing together literature, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary research, Serenella Iovino's project investigates this question in depth. Early humans did not simply observe animals: they learned from them, imagined them, followed their traces, and eventually transformed these encounters into stories, cave art, and myths.
The project proposes that myths can be understood as repositories of ecological memory, preserving ways of perceiving, understanding, and living with the natural world across generations. Stories about migrating animals or the changing seasons, for example, may have helped communities remember not only practical knowledge but also ways of understanding their place within the living world.
By connecting the environmental humanities—the study of how culture, literature, and history shape and are shaped by the natural world—with research on cognition and human evolution, the project offers a new perspective on the origins of imagination and on the enduring role of other species in the formation of culture, memory, and the human mind.