A Different Perspective.

There's a place in a lonely desert that nobody on the planet has named. It stretches on for miles in all directions without any signs of civilization, or life for that matter. It is in this lonely wilderness that an alien spacecraft landed. The craft released a robot that went about collecting data to send back to the civilization that sent it. The civilization sent the craft to discover whether there is life here, and whether they might survive here if they came. Perhaps in the future they will send explorers or settlers here.

This is not science-fiction. The civilization is us.