The evolution of intelligent species probably took even less time on other planets.  This is because the early earth was comparatively too hot to handle, a fact which may have significantly retarded the evolution of higher life forms.          Earth's geothermal activity, that is volcanoes and earthquakes, is still going strong even after 4.6 billion years.  Geothermal activity is caused by two things – gravity and radioactivity – which in turn are caused by high levels of dense materials such as iron and even denser radioactive materials such as uranium.  On lighter planetary bodies, like the Moon, geothermal activity died out a long time ago, because they have less gravity and because their uranium became depleted.  But earth is still pumping out steam and lava because it is heavier and contains more radioactive material deep within its core.  As planetary geologist Ellen Stofan says,

 

The larger a planet is, the more heat will be generated in the interior, and thus the more active the surface will be.[1]

 

Geothermal activity also pumps out carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, and thus causes global warming.  If geothermal activity causes too much global warming, then water is too hot and life dies.  Such was the case in the earth's early oceans.  Earth's oceans first appeared 4 billion years ago, but were extremely warm, almost to the point of boiling.  Although simple prokaryotic cells like bacteria could survive under near-boiling conditions, more complex eukaryotic cells could not, because the best of them can only withstand temperatures up to 60 degrees Celsius, or 140 degrees Fahrenheit.[2]  Eukaryotic cells absolutely must be the building blocks of all complex and intelligent life, because prokaryotic cells do not have the organelles necessary to sustain an organism beyond just a single cell.  Prokaryotic cells seem to have evolved very quickly after the first oceans, the first evidence of them standing at 3.85 or 3.5 billion years ago.  In contrast, eukaryotic cells emerged much later.  This is not a function of the time it takes for eukaryotes to evolve, but rather resulted from the fact that early earth was simply too hot for eukaryotic cells to even exist at all, regardless of their evolutionary potential.  On a less radioactive planet, eukaryotic life may have evolved much more quickly.  If this is true, then the first intelligent species evolved much faster than we did.

Also, early earth had too much iron on its surface.  There was so much iron that it soaked up great quantities of oxygen for well over a billion years after life first appeared on earth.  This is recorded as bands of gray and red in archaic rocks.  Animal life cannot exist without free oxygen in the air.  Therefore, surface iron severely delayed the emergence of even the most primitive worms and creepy-crawlies.  In another world, where surface iron was less plentiful in earth's early years, intelligent beings might have evolved much more quickly.

For these reasons, the earth is too iron-rich and too radioactive to make a likely candidate for the first intelligent life.  This possibly speaks for the universe at large being past its prime.  Supernovae stars have perhaps over-seeded the universe with heavy elements, such that it can no longer produce life with the same degree of efficiency as it used to.  Thus the universe is facing its midlife crisis.  In its younger days, the universe may have spawned intelligent species much more efficiently than it does now.

In another event which may have significantly retarded the development of life on earth, we may note that 700 million years ago, the earth was covered in ice.  This situation persisted for millions upon millions of years.  If other planets did not suffer from this, it follows that they developed intelligent life many millions of years before us.

 

Look to the Trees

250 million years ago, mammal-like reptiles dominated the earth.  Some of them even climbed trees, and if it weren't for the pointless evolutionary diversion of the dinosaurs who temporarily replaced them, the tree dwellers may have even developed opposable thumbs, which is a prerequisite to having the ability to use tools.  With tools, a species can become technological, and thereby become an intelligent advanced civilization like humans.  Animals that live on the ground need all four feet to run fast, so they have little chance of developing hands that can grip tools.  Animals that live in the water need fins or flippers, so the same is true for them.  Animals of the air exchange hands for wings.  So when we look for intelligent life, we should look to the trees, for it is in the trees that hands evolve.

Although dolphins and whales are intelligent, they will never be technological, because they lack the ability to grip and use tools.  You can't write Moby Dick with a flipper.  You need hands, and hands evolve from swinging in trees, and tree-swingers cannot coexist in a world filled with very tall carnivorous dinosaurs whose heads are above the treetops.  The long-term dominance of giant carnivores like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus may have significantly retarded the development of technological species on this planet.  Such dinosaurs dominated earth for well over 100 million years, until finally the mammals made a comeback, thanks to the luck of a fallen star slamming into the Yucatan.  If the dinosaurs never existed, then intelligent life may have evolved on earth over 100 million years earlier.

If the evolution of interstellar intelligent species is a race between planets, and if earth was distracted in the middle of the race by so many complications, how is it possible for us to have won the race?  If earth was running around in a reptile zoo instead of running the race track, while other planets were sprinting toward the finish line, then how can we possibly believe that we are the first intelligent species to evolve?

It is not difficult to imagine a tree-covered planet filled with monkeys where dinosaur-sized predators never existed.  Such a planet would have more gravity than earth, which would get rid of the dinosaurs and carnivorous birds and pterosaurs, since large terrestrial animals and flying creatures take a long time to evolve mechanisms to cope with gravity.  But the extra gravity would not deter trees, for the physical properties of water cohesion pull water up the trunks of trees with a force of 130 megapascals, which is several times the cohesion strength needed to overcome gravity, even for tall sequoia redwoods.[3]

But what of the extra geothermal pressures resulting from more intense gravity?  If the planet were high in iron and silicon, but low in uranium, geothermal activity would increase in proportion to iron and silicon, but decrease in proportion to uranium, and thus a favorable level of geothermal activity would be maintained despite the higher level of gravity.  As an added benefit, such a planet would also enjoy more constant levels of geothermal activity over time, instead of being skewed in favor of the early years of the planet – a fact which would make such a planet cooler than earth in its early life and thus likely to evolve eukaryotes at an earlier date than earth.  Hence, the ideal planet for intelligent life, I think, would be heavier than earth, but with less uranium.  Such a planet could probably produce intelligent life much more quickly than earth did.

Read more about the evidence for why intelligent life most likely evolved before us and most likely has visited us.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.