No.619872483
Our earth is only 4 billion years old in a universe that is 14 billion years old. What could a species learn, create, and do that has a 2 or 3 billion year head start on us? what about 10?
No.619893946
they probably have better memes.
A civilization that started in the first billion years of the universe would be immediately destroyed by the violent nature of the early universe.
That basically continues to be true until about 7.5-8 BYA. So at max a species might have 3-4 billion years on us. Even that's a bit debatable as the complexity of our DNA indicates that it started evolving about 7.5 BYA.
Where exactly is this information from? That would just mean the methods to calculate this are probably not very precise.