Settings where humans aren't 'The Mario'

[hamishspence]

I'd add to this that the Elder Things arguably killed people in self-defence, but they did spend a little time to disect a human they had just killed, presumably for the sake of curiosity. That's actually a pretty human behavior.

That was pretty much the narrator's conclusion:

"poor Lake, poor Gedney... and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last - what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn - whatever they had been, they were men!"