Ok thinking outside the square don’t hang me for this it’s just an idea, if we are in a binary system with another sun, our orbit speed will increase as we approach the other star. Like wise it will be retarded as we pull away from it once again.
What if, when we start to gain speed on the approach we become smarter; start to think faster, like increasing the capacity of a computer system, we approach the golden age of understanding life is good we reach our peak just as the two suns there at their closest, this causes great upheavals upon our planet the gravitational effects would be obvious, we are taken back to the stone age effectively just when the earth starts to slow down again as it leaves the proximity of the second sun and continues to slow for eons till it reaches the point of orbit when it once again starts to rush back toward the other sun and our thinking increases once more, which is where we are today I think. We are recycled over and over as our history would suggest. This most likely has been going on for millions of years and the alien civilizations that we find ruminants of in our solar system, some are in part our own artifacts. This does not prevent the possibility that other alien races have not moved into our neighborhood and interacted with us, it’s just our history appears to be cyclic from all the evidence and this just might be one reason for it.
end of thought