500 years ago all human settlements on Earth had always been agrarian economies with different levels of development but primitive nonetheless, until the indust

500 years ago all human settlements on Earth had always been agrarian economies with different levels of development but primitive nonetheless, until the industrial revolution started. What if it had never happened? Now we now there were previous attempts at industry, like steam engines and chemistry, but there was always a war, a drought or some other disaster that destroyed the framework where said developments were made, and sometimes even killed the people making them (Archimedes for example). What if the universe is just like that? what if we're the most advanced species and all the aliens out there are either animals or still haven't even figured out how to build clocks or engines? If that's the case then all the knowledge that ever existed would die with us.