If aliens ever visit Earth, do you think they'd waste their time with humans, having such a short lifespan?

Humans have only been in their current incantation for the last 20,000 years or so (give or take a few millennium), and yet there are lifeforms that have existed for much, much longer in their [near] current form. Perhaps there is an underlying intelligence that mankind hasn't evolved yet that will unite it in this ancient, collective intelligence... until then, maybe we wont be considered mature enough of a species to communicate with alien-kind?