Why aren't Thargoids far more advanced?

If the timescale of their war with the Guardians is to be believed (was it a million+ years ago?), shouldn't Thargoids as a species have way more advanced technology? Shouldn't WE be the "bugs" to them?
 
We are the bugs to them.Sooner or later they'll get fed up of us destroying their Meta Alloy reserves and will steamroller the bubble.
The Far Gods are the benign angelic farmers of the galaxy, mankind are the rats destroying their crops. One day they will bring in the exterminators in Hive Ships that you have yet to be exposed to.
You have been warned.
Bow down to the FarGods now, before its too late.
The end is nigh!
 
If the timescale of their war with the Guardians is to be believed (was it a million+ years ago?), shouldn't Thargoids as a species have way more advanced technology? Shouldn't WE be the "bugs" to them?
Those are women, children and elderly. The warriors are fighting Klaxians.
 
How about birds? Shouldn't they be far more advanced by now? It's been millions of years. Or trees? How about poetry? How does a bio-mechanical mass of insect wings, electrical wires, small apes, pheromones, anti-gravity thrusters and green goo advance, where does it go? Does it follow a linear path?
 
How about birds? Shouldn't they be far more advanced by now? It's been millions of years. Or trees? How about poetry? How does a bio-mechanical mass of insect wings, electrical wires, small apes, pheromones, anti-gravity thrusters and green goo advance, where does it go? Does it follow a linear path?
Birds vs a space faring race, an interesting comparison. I think we humans are a much better example of the question I'm asking. For millions of years our ancestors lived primitively, with the rate of technological progression being very slow, but exponentially increasing over time. Humans have arguably made more progress in the past century than the rest of our history. Thargoids were a space faring race that could wage an interstellar war with another advanced civilization, millennia ago.

I know it would be apples to oranges to compare their progress with ours, but I think they should be beyond our level at this point, realistically. Unless there is some sort of technological ceiling they have hit, or they're just dumb bugs that have somehow cheated nature and beaten the odds to get this far.
 
I believe the theory is that Thargoid technology has "fossilized" - they advanced to a point where they were far superior to any other race they encountered, on their home planet and elsewhere, and they've been that way for millions of years so didn't need to "advance" any further. They have tech that works, and see no need to improve it or find better alternatives. Akin to the hive insects of Earth ecology (ants, termites, bees): they have "technology" such as farming, engineering etc, as good or better than anything Humans could create on a comparable scale, and they've had this "tech" for millions of years, but it's all instinctive; there's very little selective pressure to build a better hive, or a better farm, so they stick with what they have. Under this theory, the Thargoid "hive minds" aren't creative enough to say "hey, let's try and build a better spaceship", until and unless there's actually a need for one.

It is the key Thargoid weakness: the trade-off for the high efficiency of a eusocial species is low adaptability. It's a fairly standard sci-fi trope for insectiod alien races. The Thargoids are following their "programming" doing exactly the same thing to us as they did to the Guardians, and to whoever else they might have exterminated in the deep past.
 
I believe they have advanced through evolution, rather than technological like the Guardians. If they can fly organic saucers in the vacuum of space, I believe they themselves as a species are pretty advanced. Humans are not advanced, but their extensions and creations are advanced. We have computers and smartphones now, but we as a species that operate them are still using 10 fingers, while the technologies themselves have the capacity to operate at a much faster rate without us. Meanwhile the Thargoids seem to be symbiotic, using themselves as extensions. (ie thargoid techs contain their hearts and corrosive materials which their biology itself has)

I think it's just the way Thargoids think and live. :unsure:
 
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