I think when you consider the rate of advancement of any technological species, “roughly the same level as us” basically implies that they got started at exactly the same time. Even an extra thousand years of technological advancement would put them far ahead of us. A million years would put them unimaginably far ahead.
On a cosmic scale, that’s nothing. That’s a tight window and given the like 8 billion years that planets with the required elements have had to form, I would doubt that no other species had a chance to surpass us.
I think when you consider the rate of advancement of any technological species, “roughly the same level as us” basically implies that they got started at exactly the same time. Even an extra thousand years of technological advancement would put them far ahead of us. A million years would put them unimaginably far ahead.
On a cosmic scale, that’s nothing. That’s a tight window and given the like 8 billion years that planets with the required elements have had to form, I would doubt that no other species had a chance to surpass us.