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/Okay, but going back to that same quote, my original premise still holds. An alien race could be hundreds of years ahead of us in evolution. There is no proof that they are ahead of us in space travel. In fact, they could lag us, for all we know.

To add to that - which I already mentioned before, more or less:

We could be farther along in space travel than we are, but we're not. Our brain evolution reached its current point somewhere around 50,000 years ago, but first we had to develop civilizations and science and the desire to learn and do things, and then technology. That took a good while, but just when it was really kicking in, you have The Church going around and doing things like persecuting scientists for "heresy" and creating the dark ages where nothing useful got done. ;-)

Had The Church not interfered, we could very well be a few centuries ahead of our current progress, we could have had these computers, cell phones and Poser back in 1700, and we might have developed starships by now.

Also, we could be alot further along in our space conquest than we are now aside from the exorbitant cost of it all, and a history of governments unwilling to fund such projects and unwilling to cooperate. As I said before, there could be an alien race only 20 light years away that's 10,000 years ahead of us in technology, but unable or unwilling to fund a massive space exploration project.

Evolution of technology and intelligence doesn't at all infer that space travel will automatically follow. Their culture and their means and priorities are more likely to dictate whether they set out for the outer limits or not.

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