I'm just musing but...The absence of evidence is not conclusive evidence of absolute absence. After a couple million years traces of archeological artifacts should be zero.
That leaves some big questions unanswered. How do we know we’re the only time there’s been an industrial civilization on our own planet?“
Could we even tell if there had been an industrial civilization [long before this one]. Evidence least seen is beneath today's ocean water.

An Atlantic ridge continent may have existed. Indonesia was a large contiguous area. Even Antarctica was tropical but now the European Space Agency has found evidence of prior continents beneath the ice and ocean. there is also a similar climate pattern to today back in the Pleistocene era.

We don't see any homo sapiens a million years ago but there were other species. We traced human footprints in New Mexico to 21,000 years ago and Africa suggests 70,000 years of habitation and don't get me started on ancient Turkey. Graham Hancock suggests after the last ice age and great flood it seems remnants of another pre-civilization that drowned, built pyramids worldwide with available resources.

200 years ago the question of whether there might be a civilization on Mars was a legitimate one, But once the pictures came out from interplanetary probes, that was settled for good. And that view became ingrained, so now it’s not a valid topic for scientific inquiry; it’s considered ridiculous. But no one’s ever put the actual scientific limits on it—on what may have happened a VERY long time ago.

Roman history is only yesterday.