I like the theory that we’re a precocious intelligent species. Like, although the universe is 13 whatever billion years old it takes a few cycles of suns going supernova to disperse the heavier elements to the point where a planet can form that will sustain complex life. Maybe the Earth is one of the first set of planets suitable for intelligent life to develop on, and although the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and there has been life on it for 3.7 billion years there has maybe only been multicellular life for about 500-600 million years. It took hundreds of millions of years for an intelligent species to arise once there was complex life and maybe even that was lucky, who’s to say it doesn’t “usually” take a couple billion years.
On top of all that, the universe is expected to continue forming new stars for another trillion years, so yeah, maybe we are one of the first civilizations at the dawn of the universe.