Eskimo North

Back around the 50's or 60's someone came up with the idea of classifying civilizations as class I if they had harnessed the power of a planet,
class II if they had harnessed (all) the power of a sun, and class III if they had harnessed the power of a galaxy. The Idea is still bandied about, even though the "post war" mentality behind it is so obvious. (I really hate those ironic quotes)

I've come up with two alternative civilization classification systems.

One is the idea that through advances in efficiencies, nano-machines, bio-engineering, a civilization's galactic footprint actually shrinks until the casual observer would see a primitive society where it was actually quite advanced -- wizards would be a big clue though.

The other is connected to extra-terrestrial communications within Einsteinian limits and societal stability. How much would we have to change in order to have a conversation that spanned lifetimes? What questions would you ask, knowing that only your grand-children would get the answer?
What about an answer to a question that had been asked a century ago? And how would such a conversation affect your outlook on everything else?

I believe there is a non-trivial body of evidence that previous civilizations along such lines may well have evolved before our own. I'm not sure what you'd label such a civilization but I do believe there are many ways of knowing and many ways of evolving and that a more spiritual inward directed civilization might tend to evolve in this manner.

This might be plausible in the type of civilization you speculate upon above. You would need to have a connectedness between people and generations that just doesn't exist in our present day society.