Ratboy asked:
"Does this mean they have earned the respect and admiration of other species or societies to the
point that,with their wisdom and guidance, they can affect political decisions and policies on other
worlds?"
This would be my take on it.
"Is that why they came to our solar system? Because we represent a threat to universal
harmony that can be corrected with intervention?"
I doubt this one. We don't know how long they had been on Mars, but they went to sleep 400 years ago, at the time of the Spanish Armada and the like. It was still 200 years before the Mongolfier brothers launched their first balloon. We were only a threat to each other, and even then, we couldn't weather a bad storm (ie, the Spanish Aramada).
I think that they were explorers, possibly trying to find new worlds to colonize. If Earth was their intended target, it was because we were life forms that interacted as a civilization rather than as a herd or a pack. This would make us candidates for receiving their influence, scholarship and brotherhood.
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B