It's a good, old-fashioned SF trope: what if the Aliens we contact are so far in advance that they don;t see us as equals. But the Trope stretches farther, and farther back than that: Voltaire's story Micromegas, published in 1752, shows aliens that consider Earth unpopulated because nothing so small as humans could bear intelligence. Upon interacting with us, they change their opinion: we're idiots.

This is my own, small, visual contribution to that trope.