re: What would be a more significant event in the history of mankind?

Either would be very significant.

Artifacts on Mars would imply the Great Filter is yet to strike us. Basically, we're fricked.

If we find the Grays then maybe there is no Great Filter and we can breathe more easily.

That assumes the Grays don't want to kill us, of course. If they do we're still fricked. If they don't then maybe the Gray women will want some alien sex.

This:

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making contact with complex, somewhat humanoid beings (think "the grays), who upon close inspection are discovered not to be carbon-based in their biochemical makeup.

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Would almost certainly eventually lead to this

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Finding ruins, tools, and other artifacts on the martian surface and below the surface that strongly resemble human structures (pyramids for example) here on earth, along with cave paintings depicting beings that look exactly like us, but failing to find life on the red planet

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but maybe not the other way around.

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Artifacts on Mars would imply the Great Filter is yet to strike us. Basically, we're fricked.

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I really don't understand the "Great Filter" scenario. While I'm sure some interstellar civilizations and species have destroyed themselves or died on their worlds, I don't see why it just happening on Mars would imply Earth was doomed to share the same fate. Maybe it would simply be due to Mars losing its magnetic field, which there's nothing they could have done about that. The theory just seems way too pessimistic for me to take seriously.

But the bigger thing would be a non-carbon based life form. It is theoretically possible that a life form could substitute water for methane, but it is theoretically impossible a life form to not be carbon based. Carbon can form more different bonds than every other element combined. It just doesn't seem possible an organism could hold itself together without it.

I did some digging on the great filter and found this;
Filtered Out