As I said in my last post, perfectly intelligent creatures don't necessarily have to be able to write and record their history. After the collapse of the Roman empire, Europe fell back into a state of utter political chaos - no money, no transport, no science, no class divisions, only the most basic of buildings. It almost completely forgot the Romans existed, and certainly did not keep a record of history. Yet they were clearly what you have otherwise described as an intelligent species.
And about animals only communicating on an instinctive and survival level, I'd have to disagree there. Most animals' linguistic capabilities are limited only by the physical structure of their vocal regions. Cats simply do not have the muscles to alter the cavities of their mouth, nose and oesophagus necesarry for producing the wide variety of sounds necessary to build up a sophisticated language. But, on the other hand, cats actually have the most complex and advanced language of any species besides humans. Who's to say what they could achieve if they could only evolve the right body (I say that suspecting you don't believe in evolution PA, but correct me if I'm wrong).
Actually, there was the case of the parrot that could immitate human speech to the degree that it could construct its own unique sentences and string words together to try and refer to objects it did not know the name of. This is the same kind of behaviour children go through when learning to speak and understand others, so it's quite clear that in terms of mental language, humans are not necessarily the pinnacle of the animal kingdom.
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