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Short story from many years ago: the ancient, brilliant, cruel race was Earthlings



I may have encountered this short story in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. Human explorers encounter an alien spacecraft. Aliens are cautiously friendly, but then tell the humans about an ancient, brilliant and cruel race of beings that conquered and destroyed every civilization they encountered. They were finally defeated and destroyed, or so it was thought, but their home world was never found. It turns out that this powerful, vicious race was in fact, Earthlings.




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