whose to say that life on earth didnt evolve exceptionally slowly as compared to the possible evolution of life elsewhere in the universe.  We have had many disasters in the course of life history(permian extinction etc) that killed off the majority of life on earth, thus hindering evolution.
As well, if another life form developed at more or less the same rate as use, but got to our current intelligence 10,000 years ago think how msmart they are now.  I mean we were using sticks 10k years ago, and now we have spaceflight, computers, and nukes.  and in the 3.5 billion years that life has been on earth 10k years is such a small amount of time that it is not unreasonable to assume that another life form could evolve at a similar rate, yet still end up 10k years more or less advanced than us.