Thus it appears to me that we’ve all had about the same time to develop, give or take a million years, maybe.
Assuming other planets/solar systems didn't form earlier than ours. Or, as no one really knows how life formed, their worlds could have developed a lot faster than ours. It took us billions of years to start. Other worlds may have had the right steps a lot closer together, and started with a 2 billion year old world instead of 4-5B. Also, give or take a million is still a huge window of time for a civilization to go from it's first satellite, to higher technologies beyond basic radio waves. We've advanced from nothing to hitting the other planets in 120 years. I doubt we'll still be using current radio within the next 100 or 1000 years, not to mention a million.
And even further, If you've ever read The Foundation Series, Star Wars, Dune, etc (exception being StarTrek), even most science fiction doesn't involve much crass-galaxy travel, or at least not much of it. Even with hyperdrives!
WARNING: 17Mb graphic showing size of us, solar system, galaxy, cluster, universe. May crash browser, but cool to look at.
...and the successive generations of stars needed to fuse the heavier elements....I think it unlikely that any intelligent life arose within 2by as most heavier elements were still fusing in earlier generations of stars, and galactic formation was still in its early phases. Plus the scattering of those elements would have taken longer still. I'd say we are constrained by the universe we live in regardless where it is.
