> I've always thought it made more sense that microbial life with took billions of years to develop, and originated someplace other than earth. The reason we don't see hyper-advanced civilizations is because intelligent life is only just starting to pop up alongside us, right now, and perhaps we're one of the earlier manifestations.

This explanation does not work, because of the timescales.

Five thousand years ago, we built the Pyramids. Fifty years ago, we landed on the Moon.

In contrast, it took four billion years to go from single-celled life, to the pyramids.

The odds of us being first by happenstance are astonishingly small. It's much more likely that either we are unique, or that civilizations don't leave much of a trace outside of their solar systems, regardless of whether or not they die out in the blink of a cosmic eye.