This is why I thought Sagan’s fiction book Contact was such a rip off. Some earlier civilization set up this tremoundous worm hole network that other ETs are currently using. You just can’t kick the can down the road.
It's "The Old Ones" ... a venerable SF device.
Sagan took it to the next level, though, with the message encoded in the decimal expansion of pi. ( Actually in some other base, I think. ) This was the signature of some truly transcendent being, tantamount to God.
My daughter often asks me if i think there is inteligent life in the universe, and i say, yes I do but, I also tell her that it could be we are the first, because someone has to be first.