Recycling an idea that’s decades old. Even in the Star Trek Franchise, where it was shown that cultural “contamination” is a thing in “Piece of the Action”, that ancient aliens inspired human religions (“Who Mourns For Adonais”.)
“Blink of An Eye” was also TOS, aliens living in a faster time frame. But again, not really new.
Perry Rhodan had an entire universe running 72,000 times slower than ours in 1962. (Actually, it’s complicated. The rate varies, roughly 3,000 years later the other universe runs faster.)
The complete back Fast Forward with human watchers and alien primitives overtaking them goes at least back to 1980: Dragon’s Egg is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by Robert L. Forward.
The Cheela go from having invented writing to leaving humanity (which did start beaming then an encyclopaedia) far behind in terms of technology within 24 human hours.
Edit:
I just remembered an ever older instance. ON THE SOAP BUBBLE, from Kurd Lasswitz, probably written in the 1880s.
Two protagonists visit the world of a soap bubble, adjusting their time frame to that of the bubble.
“It is written in the most ancient scriptures of the Thinkers that the world was blown from the mouth of a giant, named ‘Rudipudi’.”
I was engulfed in hot steam and a burning pain shot through me, and — I was sitting next to Uncle Wendel at the garden table. The soap bubble still floated in the same spot.
“What happened?” I asked, in surprise and shock.
“One hundred‐thousandth of a second. Nothing has changed on the Earth. If I had not moved the adjusting screw at the opportune moment, you would have been boiled in glycerine. Hmm… Should I still make public my discovery of the microgen? Well? Do you think, still, that they would believe you? Then just explain it to them.”
Uncle Wendel laughed, the bubble burst — and my little son blew another.
