Humanity was born way ahead of its time. The reason is grabby aliens.

Considering the hurdles that simple dead matter has to go through before becoming an advanced civilization and that there might be habitable planets lasting trillions of years, humanity looks incredibly early. Very suspiciously so. Robin Hanson, who first came up with the great filter in 1996, offers a compelling explanation: grabby aliens. They are defined as civilizations that 1. expand from their origin planet at a fraction of the speed of light, 2. make significant and visible changes wherever they go, and 3. Last a very long time. Such aliens explain human earliness because they set a deadline for other civilizations to appear. Non-grabby civilizations like ours can only appear early because later, every habitable planet will be taken. This is a selection effect. Plus, grabby civilizations are plausible for many other reasons: life on Earth, and humans, look grabby in many ways. Species, cultures, and organizations tend to expand in new niches and territories when possible, and they tend to modify their