The Humans spent most of their time trying to kill each other.

Another writing prompt:

Humans, despite their boundless creativity, took longer to develop space travel than other alien civilizations. That’s because they spent most of their resources developing more effective ways to kill each other

Historical record 62,8845-A32 “Human introduction to galactic civilization”

AKA “What do you mean we are the strongest military race in the galaxy?”

The Humans spent a long time before they took their first steps into the galaxy. Most species were taking their first steps on their closest extra-planetary body about 400 years after they had their industrial revolution. This was an average with some species taking less time, others more, depending on circumstances and problems with planetary conditions.

Humans took close to 1,250 years after their industrial revolution to get a foothold in space. They had made small steps forward by visiting their moon or closest viable planetary neighbor but their constant infighting kept disrupting their steps forward and at times halting any advances outwards.

And it wasn’t just military conflict that caused problems for them. For a while they were too busy trying to combat the world wide climate changes they had been causing and ignoring, and they had to put all their efforts into fixing their mistakes instead of expanding outwards into the closest star systems.

But finally they seemed to get their act together and they made quite a few advances in spatial propulsion and were able to construct ships capable of traveling not just to their closest neighbors but to the core and edge of our galaxy in reasonable times of weeks.

We had been silently observing them for quite a few millennia and were worried about them even making it out to meet us. To many times they were almost on the verge of self-destruction but somehow they pulled through and survived as a species and somehow got even stronger.

Once they started to explore their local space and were sending probes off to some of the more distant and interesting places of interest, we sent them a message of greetings and asked them to come meet us.

Of course the armored monkeys, as some species called them, came in some of their strongest ships in a fleet that simply scared the shit out of some of our more pacifist members. They are quite the nervous species at times but we knew enough about them that the leaders of the council were not overly worried. We knew that they would come armed but their curiosity would bring them along.

Most species know all about what happened when their ambassador was introduced to the galactic council and things were explained to them. The shock on their face is one of the funniest things for the school children to see when the meeting is shown to them in schools. Luckily they understood and they eventually laughed along with us.

“What do you mean we are the strongest military race in the galaxy?” is known to all school children since we started explaining why Humans were trusted to be the protectors of our galaxy. The shock that ran through Human space once it became known that most species have never known wars like the Humans have had, was eye opening.

That we knew about their history and still trusted them with being our protectors, struck a chord in their species that resonates to this day.

Not all Humans join their military, lots of them are explorers, traders, teachers, students, everything you can imagine, but under it all lies a feeling that they will look out for everyone they see and who trusts them.

They expected to meet a galaxy that was filled with species who were vastly more advanced and thus wielding weapons that they could never but imagine, but what they found was galaxy that welcomed them in their strength and asked “Will you take up the burden of being the strongest species in this galaxy?”

And they said yes.

=== end ===