It really fits the dualistic ideas of Christianity too - that humans are creatures born of and made of sin, yet we strive for purity and divinity. There's even class analysis in this too - that the "pure and divine classes" (giants in DS, nobility/clergy IRL) have no intention of onboarding the lower-class sinners (humans in DS, peasants IRL). This dualistic moralization only serves to shepherd the lower classes into subservience and make them feed themselves to the fire (vs. IRL: spend your entire life toiling to enrich your rulers).
Speculatively, the Oolacile Sanctuary'statues could have had a double use: by lighting a fire at night, there would be a congregation of relatively human-faced statues lighted around, and a proverbial _horde_ of their shadows, looking like actual Humanities, projected on the walls.
a fire surrounded by humanity sprites looks like the inverse of the dark sign. maybe the sanctuary commemorates the first time the gods discovered the abyss, which would also be humanity discovering the divine.
Considering the dark sign is essentially a sieve of leaking humanity inducing Hollowing that may actually make sense. A inversion would fit a more natural state of embraced humanity and actualization
Regarding the sanctuary, I think it reflects something Last Protagonist covered in his video on the true nature of humanity in Dark Souls. In the absence of Fire (and thus disparity), humans have no individual existence. When the Fire finally fades, there will be no shadows, only one singular Dark that encompasses and is all. That is why the Dark sprites are drawn to those touched in some way by the Flame.
Hi ! Loving your vids ! Here's an addition to your theorie from the Izalith's Staff from Dark souls 3 : "Ancient catalyst of the Witch of Izalith and her daughters, used long before the dawn of chaos and of pyromancy. With the birth of the Chaos Flame, the flame witches were at once both sorcerers and shamans. Faith adjusts the power of sorceries cast using this catalyst, and the staff also seems to boost the power of dark sorceries. Skill: Steady Chant Boost the strength of sorceries for a very short period. Works while equipped in either hand." So in fact, before the fire, religious people were shamans, and because there was no First Flame and pyromancy and because humanity came from the Dark, thus they use Dark spells (dark sorcery to be precise, like Manus) like this staff is indicating. I always found it strange (when i played DS3) for the Witch of Izalith to use dark sorceries before using pyromancies but this is their heritage, the heritage of all Humanity, drawing their power from the Dark before the Dawn and Age of Fire.
Although I've read somewhere that the witches of Izalith are a separate race. And it makes sense. They got a separate great soul and don't give humanity upon death. But the notion of nature/shamanism and humanity being linked is interesting, nice find
@@SolidAlloy2 They may be human in the sense homo habilis, homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo sapiens sapiens are all humans, but not the same kind of human.
@@BigBadWolframio so, the root species in dark souls is never named. the closest we get to a name for them is "hollows", which is what happens when you're drained of your soul in dark souls, essentially reverting you to what the pre-fire humanoids would've looked and acted like. however, each of the major humanoid races then descends from a lineage defined by their soul. giants have different souls than gods, which have different souls than humans, which have different souls than witches. in fact, the implication of calling the first human "the pygmy" is that the only difference between the pygmy and gwyn, the witch or nito before they found the lord souls was that the pygmy was small. your species in dark souls is defined by your soul, with humans having the dark soul, gods having gwyn's, the witches (of which only quelana, the fair lady, quelaag, ceaseless discharge and the unnamed witch outside the bed of chaos remain) have the soul of the witch of izalith, and finito and milfinito have the soul of nito. if you want further proof of this, the species can and do interbreed, despite being radically different in their properties, sizes and abilities. the dancer in 3 is a descendant of the gods and men, for example. their bodies are all the same, it's the soul that makes them different.
@Yal_Rathol I would disagree with that to a degree. Similar to the dregs Hollows appear to result from a lack of humanity and thus would be the inversion of what humans naturally would be before they were essentially tricked into being fuel for the flame. The Witches are the daughters of the Witch of Izalith but it's rather unclear if they weren't also humans before attaining the soul.
14:50 - I was going to say that, given the Dark Souls historical-cycle by which civilizations are kind of buried under other, newer kingdoms, it's possible the stone circle and grave weren't located in a cave at the time it was built.
This is the first video of ta’s that I saw the archaeological reference coming before the explanation! I live in England near Dartmoor and there are a lot of stone circles on the moors, I can specifically think of a stone circle by Gidleigh that has stones looking very much like Manus’ boss room lol
@@tarnishedarchaeologist just wanted to say I just found your channel and, man, this is a gold mine! It looks made just for me! Keep cooking brother! Got yourself a new sub! God bless ya and Jesus loves ya!
I think it's a misnomer to consider humans, gods, giants, and even the witches of izalith to be wholly different species. It seems to me, at least from the one image depicting men approaching the fire, that it's likely they all arose from one common ancestor, and finding the Lords Souls birthed the lines of gods, humans, witches, and even the resurrected dead in Nito. They're different forms of the same base principle, each given a different aspect of the First Flame. It gets exaggerated over prehistoric eons, when the gods/giants begin to grow really tall, Nito's necromancers amass generations of corpses, and when the flame fades the Witches attempt to light a new one and birth the Demons. At the point we see the games, it's hard to draw those connections, and instead we just see them as separate species. Even then, we find human-sized witches, gods, and others. I think the gods, Gwynevere in particular, are very interesting. If she was literally the size depicted in Anor Londo, then it's likely she's either the origin of the giant race entirely, or her mother was a member of the race.
Early Anor Londo has cloranthy flowers as the symbol of Gwyn's magnificent sun. Most of the stone coffins in the Tomb of the Giants, where the Gods are buried, have cloranthy flowers engraved on them. Some of the destructible object skeletons buried in cloranthy-engraved caskets are half-human, half-dragon. If the world before the first flame was just crags, archtrees and dragons, then all other fauna (including humanoids) evolved from flame-mutated dragons over many generations. But was it hundreds of generations or hundreds of millions? We will never know.
I spent the last week and a half bing watching your entire Elden Ring series and it's one of the best things I've ever watched. It changed the way I interpreted the narrative, appreciate the art and stoked my dying, smouldering fire of curiousity.
7:58 i disagree. manus's grave site being so atypical is likely a lore-based decision. the reason we can assume that is because other graves in dark souls are usually burial mounds, naturally formed caverns or simple pits dug into the dirt and marked with stones. the concept wasn't fleshed out when DS1 came out, but by the time of DS3, we would eventually learn that humanity has a class system, and at the top of the hierarchy are "the pygmy lords", direct descendants of the furtive pygmy who found the dark soul. they are the kings and queens of humanity by birthright and generally have the most powerful, most pure dark soul fragments dwelling in them. the implication of manus being "primeval" is that he was one of the first humans. that means he must either be the furtive pygmy, or one of their direct descendants, one of their family that was the first imbued with the dark soul. this is further emphasized with his name, "manus", which means "hand" and is the root word for "man" and "mankind". whoever manus was, he would've been immensely respected in his day, so him being buried in a special gravesite molded out of the stone with massive stone pillars marking it actually makes a lot of sense. it also makes sense that humanity would stop burying their dead that way, since with the advent the age of fire, gwyn begins sealing the dark soul within the darksign, meaning the magical ability to use the dark soul to mold the stone and construct the specialized stone pillars would've been lost. cultural shifts away from worshipping the dark and into worshipping fire also mean that humans would've lost their desire to bury their nobility in special places or special ways, since the nobility contained more dark soul and thus would've become more and more disliked as gwyn took control of the world.
I don't think Gwyn created the darksign until the fire started to fade. It was his backup plan to insure that _someone_ would always try to link the fire and never allow it to fully fade.
@@Greywander87 the ringed knight set says he branded the human knights after the war with the dragons, and one of the dragon-head shields says that humanity's heroics went unsung because gwyn feared their power. that is long, long before the fire started to fade.
With both the idea that there is a great span of time between the first flame being found, and the different groups being created. And the war with the dragons. And the revelations given in DS3. I think there is an easy way to square "manus as furtive pygymy" and the pygmy lords. After all, Manus could have been the furtive pygmy. But it was the pygmy lords who participated in the war against the dragons. Manus having died, and been buried in the caves they lived in. Long before the war with the dragons and the age of fire. Inside the Caves of the land that would eventually become lordran. To be found by Oolacile a long time later. Oolacile, New Londo, Anor Londo, the Tomb of the Giants, and Izalith. All the places representing the peopole of the fire, and the four lords. And the ringed city, far away at the end of the world, where the Pygmies would come to live in. Perhaps the Oolacile Sanctuary represents not just the comemoration of the discovery of Manus, Humanity Sprites, and their attraction to flame. But perhaps the rediscovery of their nature as beings of the Dark Soul.
Arguably catastrophic, the cycle of fire and dark appears to be perfectly natural and not overly harmful to humanity. It's harmful to those beings born of light, which humanity are distinctly not.
that is the problem, he doesnt use ANY info that the GAME itself provides to tell ITS story. he tries to somehow shoehorn in irl lore into elden ring or dark souls, who while take inspiration from irl stuff, have their own stories told INGAME via descriptions, item placement, enemy and enemy placement, etc he isnt analysing ANYTHING in those videos, he is just doing WIILD speculation that is extremely nonsensical
@@ONobreBabuino The developers of the game were inspired by the real world, and somehow you see it as a bad thing to actually examine that instead of pretending the game is a magic space with no connection to anything else. Video games are constantly referencing the real world, unfortunately most gamers aren't that smart.
@@PlatinumAltariai never denied that the devs use real world inspiration, as we see with the gwyn statue in heide being a falcon because its inspired from the sun god ra, who had a falcon head. my problem with TA's analysis is that he tries to fit in stuff from irl which just doesnt make sense in context of the game and even still, those irl inspirations are minor and help explain certain parts of the lore, like the gwyn statue thing i mentioned. but to the scale that TA tries to portray it to be, it just doesnt make any sense at all
@@andrewbowen2837 ok, lets use the theme of prehistory mentioned in the video, and let me tell you how much TA gets this wrong. First, we have to recognize that fromsoft's games are hindered with localization errors which offuscate the script's intention, hence ill be using what the JPN version of the game says, which has the original text, different from the text of other languages like english. Second, lets look at the cinematic intro. Dragons are beings which predate the coming of souls/disparity, meaning, the first flame. When the first flame came to be, it would only be logical that the dragons, who just "were", would begin to gain states of existence in them given that they now bear the source of life in them, the soul, meaning, life and death. In order to understand miyazaki's games, one has to imagine that each game is akin to his playground, each thing placed in its position being meant to tell something to the one who is in his playground. Now, lets look at for instance, the horned giant skull next to an archdragon descendant which serves as the covenant chief for the dragon covenant in ds1. This skull bearing horns and fangs being next to a descendant of the archdragons of old already paints us a picture that these horned giants (oni as ds3 would later call them) are too descendants of archdragons, and to further reinforce this, we encounter in the tomb of the giants a giant skeleton that not only walks in four, but also has a dragon-like face and tail, what this tells us is that all biological beings in the world of dark souls originated from the archdragons, who predated life and would be the first to receive life itself, and would eventually reproduce and adapt in multiple environments as we see with for example, the hydras, water dragons. For further example of this, there are the wyverns, called flying dragons in the original jpn, archdragons who lost their two frontal limbs in favor of bigger wings, or ds2's wyrms, original name land dragons (地竜), or ds3's cut "flying snakes", wyverns from dragon aerie (as seen in their face being identical to that of ds2's wyverns) who became air-only, thus losing their legs entirely. There also are the snakes, who are called in the original japanese "imperfect dragons". This already is a great part of the prehistory of dark souls which TA ignored thanks to not only his insistence in not looking at what the game tells the player and instead shoehorn in real life history in these games, but also thanks to him not acknowledging that dark souls is full of localization mistakes. Another mistake is the "primeval" man he talks of. In the jpn, its just "ancient man", and in reference to Manus, not some weird prehistorical settlement. Meaning, this tells us that Manus was originally a pygmy, an ancient human, before the dark soul IN his body, his humanity, went wild and transformed him into the beast that we fight, known as the "MASTER of the Abyss". (深淵の主) Now, as to the sequence which shows the lords finding the lord souls, there are things lost in localization too. First, the "they" makes actual reference to "several animals" (幾匹か), meaning, those people who found the lord souls arent like the civilized race we know of ingame, they were more like primitive creatures which were like lions, hornets, hawks and dragons, beings who lived simple lives. Second, the "dark" referenced is unlikely to be the Dark of humanity, the Dark of the Dark Soul, and is way more likely to be just darkness, the absence of light itself, hence why in the original jpn, these creatures were "captivated" by fire, for all they knew was darkness, and seeing something so bright and strange would surely make one who only knew darkness really interested in what that thing would be. This is how the original jpn sounds like: "And then, some animals which were born from the Dark were captivated by fire and found the Souls of Kings." そして、闇より生まれた幾匹かが 火に惹かれ、王のソウルを見出した So, the "prehistory" of dark souls, the period before civilization, isnt that complicated to grasp as TA tries to portray it to be thanks to his way of lore-analysing. Dragons were just there, and since life and states of existence didn't exist, disparity, they just "were". But then, the first flame came to be suddenly, and it brought disparity, the power of disparity itself being souls as the fire keeper in 3 outright confirms, hence why the first flame is also called the source of souls in the jpn dialogue of shanalotte. Since dragons predated fire, they would be the first who would receive souls, thus the first biological beings to ever exist. From then on, since there was now death, life and so on, they had to get around this new era, hence they began spreading around the "lower world" which holds up the "upper world" as we see with the archtrees in ash lake holding up the surface in the tomb of the giants. Beings like snakes, wyverns, wyrms, basilisks, birds, and so on, came to be thanks to the dragons adapting and evolving in new environments. in regards to the humanoids, the most likely evolutionary line is this: archdragons -> horned giants -> giants -> the race of the gods (since they are inbetween humans and giants in size) -> pygmies/humans then, at some point in history, some humanoid animals which were likely the race of the gods went on to find the first flame in the depths of a cave in the lower world, and since they were born in the dark, they only knew the dark, so in consequence they would be captivated by this bright fire, and close to it, they found the souls of kings, whom they used to establish civilization, with gwyn spreading it amongst his clan. each souls of kings inhibits an element of disparity. if the furtive pygmy is the king of dark, he held the dark soul. if gwyn is the king of the sun's light per his jpn title, he held the light soul. if nito is the grave king, he held the death soul. if izalith gave life to the flame of chaos with her soul, she held the life soul. THIS is the prehistory of dark souls, not what TA said
6:04 actually, today it's basically non-existant. The only real evidence left of Oolacile is Artorias's grave. Everything else has crumbled away entirely or been buried under the Darkroot Forest.
That really is the best way to play. Just dont catacombs first yourself, i can see that leaving the border of fun and crossing into the “im never playing again” category
When it comes to the circle of statues, the bonfire at the center always felt emblematic of Gywn rather than the flame. In a weird way it is a more metaphorical interpretation of the statue of Gwyn in the ring city. They complete each other. The humanity's draw to the bonfire and the pygmies kneeling to Gwyn. Humanity in Dark Souls wasn't always drawn to the flame the gods bound them to it to control them.
That's can't be right; we know that some pre-flame creatures went up to the flame and found the lord souls. So clearly whatever we were before was attracted to them.
Gwyn found the flame and yet Gwyn has an uncle - therefore the pre-flame creatures had some kind of society. Probably the first flame was affecting the world for millennia (creating life) before it was found. Edit: Bonfires are wacky. They are made out of the bones of dead(???) undead and they don't have any affect on humans that haven't yet exhibited the undead curse. They act as direct conduits for offered humanity to be teleported to the first flame to be burned. What motive do undead-fearing human societies have for spreading more of them?
@@PlatinumAltaria Just because 4 out of any untold population where drawn to something doesn't mean everyone was drawn or there would be more lords. But more over, DS3 in the ring city explicitly states Gwyn bound humanity to the flame. He did so to bind and tame our darkness.
@@xbomb87 I don't disagree, Gwyn's crown and cloths and kingdom didn't come out of nowhere but the flame wasn't a rising tide. All ships didn't raise equally otherwise Gwyn and the Gods wouldn't be on top. While the gods and giants built great cities the pygmies were clearly behind in terms of development. Heck, the Pygmies Ringed City at the end of time wasn't even built by them it was made by Gwyn. He and the Gods shepherded humanity giving them the culture that resembles the world we end up playing in. We can even see some of this "humanity is culturally trailing behind" when we compare Oolacile and Anor Londo architecture, which is fair since the former is a suburb of the latter. Both are utilizing historically Italian architecture. Oolacile represents a Roman era architecture meanwhile Anor Londo is Gothic Italian architecture which doesn't pop up until the 1200AD. The fostering of a dependence on fire started a "new era" for humanity. Prior to Gwyn and the gods changing humanities ways "humans" didn't make stuff like they do today. The ancient humans forged things from the abyss (a now long abandoned practice thanks to the flame.) The binding of humanity was an attempt to forestall a future rival. They turned humans against the dark. The dark which gave them power. The dark that they used to build their society and material objects. That isn't something that would happen in a single generation. The Gwyn statue in the Ring City has the pygmy stripped down before Gwyn not because they were naked apes but because that statue was emblematic of being stripped of their old culture, of the dark, while embracing the flame culture. A lot happens in the timeline between the flame appearing and the Age of Fire (dragons defeated, humanity bound no more grey or dark only light lol).
@@Writh811 I agree with most of this but afaict Oolacile was a separate vassal kingdom at the time the dlc is set, not an outlying part of the capital. Lordran is compressed in scale to make the gameplay more fun.
Your points really struck a chord with me. I think humanity's true nature is to resist & defy: the point you make that we are all basically descended from an ancestor that was likely a mutant variant that embraced fire rather than run from it hits home
22:44 Not sure if anyone else pointed to it, but it could be signifying a different kind of "First Contact". It could be re-creating contact with "The First Flame".
What a great vid. So good, thank you. Like each of your vids, Hq production, music, video. It takes a lot of work, and each one is a gem. I'm so glad I stumbled over your channel 2 years ago.
I love your videos so much, I think taking an archaeological perspective on these games is really refreshing, and the fact you CAN analyze souls games with an archaeological lens really attests to the fine detail work that goes into the game design and world building. Looking forward to more!
I've always thought that humanity sprites looked like bodies wrapped for burial rituals and that they're ghosts of the original inhabitants who took that shape when arising from their tombs.
This has always been a topic thats was super interesting to me but not covered much by any channel so its really nice to have you take a trip back there
15:04 there's evidence that Denisovans actually had a burial practice since there was a skull found on a ledge that a lot of evidence says the skull could've only ended up on it via being set by someone/thing.
What a genius video. It never occurred to me the disparity in architectural motifs throughout the DLC indirectly tells us valuable information about the history of the world. Manus being a sorcerer-shaman in an ancient time during the early Age of Fire? Absolutely genius.
This video is so masterfully writen and well researched. I love the transistion of seing it from the outside, then going underground to Manus's grave and examing it. Finding explanitions for it. Than going back outside to put it into perpective and putting together a narrative of what it could have been like when the Olicians discovered the origins of humanity. Than transition into a poietic outro of the nature of humanity and it's realtionship with fire. Instant Sub! :)
Been waiting for someone to do the prehistorical side. I find it far more interesting to decode the parts that the game doesn't even talk about in item descriptions
Gwyn is always specifically referred to as a king in the Japanese text, never as a lord. Similarly, the "lord souls" are actually "souls of kings". The gardeners aren't people turning into plants, but plants shaped by Oolacilian magic similar to the golems they use. Finally, "may the flame guide thee" is just the generic motto of people associated with the gods, it's just that in the English translation it got replace by "vereor nox" for no reason. It's not exclusive to Elizabeth.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for explaining such a simple yet profoundly fundamental part of the game so clearly. My lord. You just explained the must fundamental part of the very start of the game. What in the good dang heck is going on with the fire keepers? Besides them being evocative of the Vestals. It feels so obvious now but also so much more meaningful, they're literally living kindling. As is described in game, any sprite can be kindling. It's funny, I've felt the draw of fire (if you will) this entire time. Every time I played any Dark Souls game I marched right up there and linked the flame. I followed it's light like a moth. Suddenly I want to embrace the dark. =) And here I thought the story was mostly the poetic Edda and story of Siegund but all of that came much later.
It's ironic that the place were the first flame ignited would be were the ringed city was built on top of. Any chance for an analysis on the Cathedral of blue and Lothric how they share these motivs: the headless knight, the wax covered scholar, the priestess and the hunter?
@@whatsnewbois9814 The arena itself doesn't look especially similar to me, but it is interesting how you get there by jumping down the hole, cause it's a lot like the hole in the arch tree hollow from the DS1 intro that the camera flys through. It almost looks like they uprooted those archtrees and built the city on that very land. So yeah you might be on to something here
Things like this are why I don't like the Demon's Souls remaster. Great game, etc. but with the changes to the textures, the designs of the zones, even the soundtrack, Bluepoint didn't just alter FromSoft's intent. They altered the game's story and lore. Where FromSoft puts intent behind their creative choices, they would mix materials and architectures from different histories to make a point. Meanwhile, Bluepoint turned a defense outpost that had just succumbed to undeath to a gothic castle that has been abandoned for centuries. The remake looks amazing, it's beautiful, it sounds great. But it changed the story. And I don't like it. Lot's of talk about wanting a Bloodborne remaster - I want one too... but I don't want it, if it would be like the Demon's Souls one.
Demon's Souless demake is a litmus test on who likes slop and doesn't give a fuck about art, simply put. Bluepoint historically always ruined the games art direction with their awful job, and were always defended by idiots
Oh wow, calling probably the best looking and genuinely enjoyable game on ps5 a demake while also calling people who like it idiots is something else 😂 I don’t think the dark souls community will ever stop to amaze me, positively and negatively.
@@tomaszbuat2437 It's a great game, and no matter how much BluePoint butchered the designs, the sound, the music, it's still a good game. But when you have a studio telling its story through designs, levels, architecture, changing that architecture, design, textures, sounds, etc. IS changing the story. And if they do the same thing to Bloodborne, you will lose major parts of the story - parts that only exist in textures and deliberate architecture. There's a whole theory that Bloodborne is based on true story, and that theory relies entirely on the level design and purposeful architectural decisions. BluePoint's Demon's Souls does not have a coherent story. It's just a mess of assets and aesthetics that makes no sense, because it was made by people who don't care for substance. It's a generic AAA-looking release.
@@BobBliborare you joking?😂 The remaster did an amazing job trying to keep as original as possible. And honestly I think that’s where they go wrong, because o.g demon souls is DOG 💩 🤣. demon souls is really a crap game, its definitely a game people should skip over, but the remaster helps with the headache of playing it
I'm really stoked to see you going into Dark Souls! I've been following you for a while now and I appreciate the depth of your analysis, your Eldin Ring video showing the tablet in Eldin John's hands blew my mind! That said, as a former scholar of religious studies - it's deeply unfortunate to hear "shaman" used as a general term. I know how that happened, as Mircea Eliade took the word as an anglicization of "šamán" from the Tungusic peoples of Sibera when he showed up wanting to study and generalize more religions and he was working closely with Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung who both adopted his terminology readily, and then it later got folded into the cultural lexicon of fantasy stories and games and the truth was lost in the face of "common knowledge." The truth of the matter is that it's not a general term, it's an incredibly specific cultural term for a very particular spiritual medium and healer in the Tungusic culture. Having spoken to a woman who had trained for decades in the spiritual arts of her culture, she adamantly asserts she still lacks the proper skill set to be addressed as šamán, and it pains her deeply to hear a title from her living culture that speaks to the great respect due to one of that rank being tossed around as a generic term for animistic spiritual worker. I can't find a digital copy of the materials she spoke about, but her talk was a joint venture between herself (a Tungusic spiritual worker) and several native Ohlone people titled "Shamanism and Cultural Appropriation: Indigenous Perspectives" from a presentation at Pantheacon in 2019.
I had a sneaking suspicion that the Oolacile sanctuary was representing the furtive pygmy and now I'm convinced I was more than half right. Outstanding video as always. God bless
I really dig your content and fully believe that you're one of the greats with regards to souls-lore. That said, my heart sinks every time I see something that isn't Elden Ring.
Manus is halflight from ds3 Here’s why: 1.halflight uses a sorcery that looks exactly like a “light” version of the pursuers sorcery that you can get by exchanging manus’ soul with snuggly the crow. Remember that the people from oolacile used to develop light spells only and manus has dark spells 2.halflight wears a set that reminds a lot of the aesthetic from oolacile (same colors, gold details) and uses a birch bow which is a very used material in oolacile. 3. We can speculate that dusk princess and halflight had a relationship in the past because there are linea of dialogue from dusk that describe that she felt some kind of sadness and familiarity with manus, and we know that halflight visited the ringed city but he never came back again. 4.- the broken pendant from ds1 belongs to halflight and we can acces to the dlc because manus wants it, also we can see halflight wearing it. 5.- halflight served to kaathe, before the midir’s fight there is an altar to the dark or kaathe and also a corpse that is worshipping the altar, the corpse has the halflight set. Its just a theory but it works on my mind and really resolves a lot of problems with the manus’ lore in general
dark souls is sooooooo fucking good and I love this channel and channels like this that go beyond the lore we all know. I love that you use archeological and art history methods to do your work. as an art historian myself, I very much appreciate this
I’m interested in where this goes. There is definitely some interpretation going on that is different than many agreed upon DS lore theorists. That being said, DS lore is less rigid than Elden Ring’s lore and lends itself better to other interpretations.
Btw, I finished playing DSR using Luke Ross VR mod, first time through a dark souls game. It was life changing ;) and is so much more meaningful with this channel. I don't have the right words to describe how awesome the playthrough was, the dread experienced when entering the fog wall to Manus. By far the most difficult fight. I chose not to link the fire...
Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one noticing that Gwyn's army in the intro is that of an advanced civilisation! In fact as you mention, Izalith was also there during this "pre" history. I would guess there were others. Unless the lord souls were arbitrarily required to found a kingdom. Keep in mind, fighting the dragons was presumably thousands of years after finding the flame and the lord souls. That's a suspicious amount of powerful and technologically advanced cultures for a time we are only told is just "grey crags, arch trees" etc. I mean, it's possible that that description only applies to the very early state of the world but we have nothing else to go by, so... yeah I'll assume everything before the age of fire was just that - an ashen wasteland dotted with arch trees and dragons. Because otherwise, if the world above ashen lake was already full of life... then Gwyn's age of fire turns out to be entirely un-spectacular for everyone but the Anor Londo "gods".
I’ve always believed that there was a large chunk of time between the awakening of the flame and the discovery of the Lord Souls, it just feels like there’s history during that period that got forgotten
I had just assumed the Pygmy naked and crawling represented much like a hollow …ie: both soulless, one having lost and one before finding. I hadn’t felt the gap in history was animated per se but those were just artistic expression for what the narrator was saying at the moment.
"No other mammal is drawn to fire." - I get the feeling you're not a cat owner... But jokes aside, this is the dream. The Tarnished Achaeologist is going hollow.
I am sure that things here have been discussed before but as I haven't seen them until now it makes me wonder, if no one has brought up some of these points does this video make a certain fromsoft employee feel vindicated to finally have the details they put in the game recognised for their implications after all of these years
When I first came across the Oolacile Sanctuary, I couldn’t help but notice its similarities to Firelink Shrine, both in their structure (bowl shape with bonfire, both appearing to have similar methods of construction and degrees of erosion) and the fact that they sit above a human settlement overtaken by the Abyss. Any ideas as to how they may be related? Perhaps the linking of the fire is the general connection of fire to souls rather than the specific connection performed to fuel it, meaning that the discovery of fire is also a firelinking and these are both firelink shrines
Regarding Manus, why the first man, and why the father of the abyss. and what is the abyss. My thoughts: The same ancient of the known myths - the myth of Gilgamesh tells of a hero who was strong and mighty, but capricious like an animal. He met Enkidu - who was like an animal. At first they fought, then became friends. But then. Enkidu died. and Gilgamesh first knew death, and UNDERSTOOD that he, too, was mortal. A similar story with Buda, a prince who knew no evil or grief, began to leave the castle, and knew pain, illness, and death. After which he thought deeply and became Bodhisattva - enlightened. And he taught how to stop being afraid and accept death. *(prepare to die) In these ancient examples, the main cultural event that made a man (conscious) from an animal (wild man) is his awareness of his mortality. Manus is the archetype of the first man who knew the "abyss" - non-existence, death. Therefore, Manus is the first man. A man who realized his mortality. i.e. Manus is the point of the Evolutionary turning point from ape to man. The beginning of culture. A man who realizes his finitude has a need for immortality. or rather, to preserve experience. That is why text and culture appear. To preserve knowledge. To achieve immortality of knowledge. But thoughts of death are scary. To defeat Manus means to defeat the fear of inevitable death. i.e. Manus as a monster is the fear of realizing one's mortality, of the abyss. This is exactly what Artoris failed to cope with. Artoris was afraid. And could not come to terms with it. He despaired. But his heroism consisted in the fact that he gave the shield to Sif, protecting his friend from death, and the fear of death. But he himself remained defenseless before him and therefore suffered defeat. In essence, it was an act of self-sacrifice, to save a friend. Although, maybe Alvina did it? I don't know. Also, "humanity" in the game (a black humanoid ghost) is blackness, emptiness, death, CONSCIOUS by a human. A black hole inside the circle of the "cursed sign", surrounded by fire (culture, religion) that holds back the abyss, holds back the destructive power of awareness of one's mortality. This is a cultural barrier from madness, despair, from an existential crisis, from awareness of one's mortality. But at the same time, this black hole is unbearable. It causes "hunger" (empty stomachs of many in the game.) The desire to fill this emptiness with something. (to come to terms with the awareness of death.) Hunger that makes you swallow souls. makes you move forward. Thus, this fear of death is the main motivator to accomplish feats. The great engine of human culture and every person.
It's very astounding how Souls games are very focused on the story they are trying to tell and its themes, and because of it they still convey so much about both their world and ours. Writing and game design at an incredibly high level, puts even the best of other games to shame.
i hope this is the start of even more dark souls content! elden ring is fine, but the world of dark souls just feels so much more fleshed out and beautiful to me, I've loved it ever since ds1 and that's only grown with every game since
I just saw some photos of these structures currently called, "Nileometers." They had a way of reliably confining a small portion of the Nile for accurate measurement of it's flooding. It was a circular tower-like structure with a winding stairway on the inside circumference leading downwards. Presumably you would count how many stairs remained and if you were at the bottom most stair you may need to extend a ruler below to measure the water if it was well below even that. The circular circumferential stairwell leading down to nowhere was so similar in appearance that I thought I was looking at DS1 concept art for a second. =)
Hi, thank you for the video and I'm big fan of your channel. I just want to correct that the Moai statues are actually facing inwards instead of facing the ocean (20:44)
hello, just letting you know the playlist for this series is ordered wrong, and the 1st episode is the last that plays when trying to watch the playlist. Great video and thank you for your work.
I love your work. I believe that Oolacile was well after Gwynn had established his reign. I believe that the Lord Souls and the powers they provided were linked to the idea of a fire. Gwynn received a spark causing a flame (Creation), Gwynn literally uses the power of his flame to create a whole world, a sun and moon, on top of the archtrees, soil and sea, for people to live in. The Witch of Izalith recieved the power of change, fuel to heat and light once the fire is lit. Her powers include creating poisons, making the body iron, even burning your health for more strength. This makes more sense if Pyromancy is changing one thing to another. Air to fire or poison, your skin to iron, or your health to strength. Finally all fires burn out, Nito gains the power of Entropy. He can age and wither, all things coming to an end. Once the fire is out, there is darkness and the Dark soul symbolizes that new future.
For a moment I thought this was going to be some tin hat video about the lands between being the prehistory of Lordran. Wasn't that, shame, but still amazing
omfg i am so so so so happy we are talking about the prehistory 3:45 like this. i am so hyped hahaha YESS 5:00 IZALITH LOOORE omfg yes yes yes pahahha can ya'll tell im excited 6:00 pahaha omg primevil man... i just got goosebumps pahaha 8:20 oh~~~~ my~~~ god. you are so right. he has horn like protrusions. i am so so curious to see how this could relate to the crucible in elden ring 21:41 oooo~ i love how you built up the explanations of societies and their "epochs?" to lead up to the concept of dark soul's first contact with primeval man. i gained a great new perspective of the dlc. i guess the follow up question would be. now that we know there was a "first contact" event in the game. who made first contact? and what were the consequences? what if it was the chaos flame? 25:20 we are talking about the first contact with fire. but i am so curious about the nature of the fire. i think, at least the bonfire that we know so well and love, uses human bones, but perhaps the humanity lingering within the bones, as fuel? that's why item descriptions of human bones in dark souls and even elden ring talk of how brittle it is, almost as if all the humanity was used up, leaving just the unburnable bone, brittle and useless, crumbling at the touch. and you mention 24:40 that other animals and beasts do not like fire (also a common theme in fromsoftware games), but why do we love it? why do humanity sprites love it? because they love congregating/aggregating. they must sense some innate humanity in the flames and feel drawn to it. even though the flame is burning at the cost of our humanity.
"we are drawn to the flame, but we are born of the dark"
damn this slaps so hard
It really fits the dualistic ideas of Christianity too - that humans are creatures born of and made of sin, yet we strive for purity and divinity. There's even class analysis in this too - that the "pure and divine classes" (giants in DS, nobility/clergy IRL) have no intention of onboarding the lower-class sinners (humans in DS, peasants IRL). This dualistic moralization only serves to shepherd the lower classes into subservience and make them feed themselves to the fire (vs. IRL: spend your entire life toiling to enrich your rulers).
I'm black so its more so true for me.
@@TKTOV So what are you drawn to in this metaphor of your's? If the dark is your skin, then what is the fire?
@@wispfire2545 probably the whealth brought by the hot forging ovens of the dwarfs, aka, the migrate to europe for Money xD
@@TKTOV Into white women, are you?
Speculatively, the Oolacile Sanctuary'statues could have had a double use: by lighting a fire at night, there would be a congregation of relatively human-faced statues lighted around, and a proverbial _horde_ of their shadows, looking like actual Humanities, projected on the walls.
This is a really good observation.
Ain't no falling leaves telling this story!
We'll be returning to the fallen leaves soon enough!
Ashes and embers
Stones cry out this time.
Wrong game.
@@Illusivem8ne man absolutely hates jokes
You know it’s gonna be a good TA video if a Fertile Crescent civilization is referenced in the first two minutes of the video
Tarnished Archeologist covering DARK SOULS?!?! THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE, WHAT A GIFT.
He already has a few videos on Dark Souls Archaeology, I believe. About the Chosen One and Dark Lord prophecies.
RIGHT LIKE IM SO HAPPY I LOVE THIS GAME AND CHANNEL
This is a testament to how rich and relevant Soulsborne lore is. But when it comes to lore, Bloodborne is still the reigning champion of all time!
Chosen Archiologist
@@martonandraskovacs8103 love that
The beginning of something truly monumental
Really excellent
a fire surrounded by humanity sprites looks like the inverse of the dark sign. maybe the sanctuary commemorates the first time the gods discovered the abyss, which would also be humanity discovering the divine.
Considering the dark sign is essentially a sieve of leaking humanity inducing Hollowing that may actually make sense. A inversion would fit a more natural state of embraced humanity and actualization
Regarding the sanctuary, I think it reflects something Last Protagonist covered in his video on the true nature of humanity in Dark Souls. In the absence of Fire (and thus disparity), humans have no individual existence. When the Fire finally fades, there will be no shadows, only one singular Dark that encompasses and is all. That is why the Dark sprites are drawn to those touched in some way by the Flame.
This almost sounds like an inverse of the locust preacher from dark souls 3: "Fear not the fire, my friend, and let the feast, begin"
I wonder if those effigies in the sanctuary came for a dinner. They are gathering around the fire, after all.
Hi ! Loving your vids !
Here's an addition to your theorie from the Izalith's Staff from Dark souls 3 :
"Ancient catalyst of the Witch of Izalith and her daughters, used long before the dawn of chaos and of pyromancy.
With the birth of the Chaos Flame, the flame witches were at once both sorcerers and shamans. Faith adjusts the power of sorceries cast using this catalyst, and the staff also seems to boost the power of dark sorceries.
Skill: Steady Chant
Boost the strength of sorceries for a very short period. Works while equipped in either hand."
So in fact, before the fire, religious people were shamans, and because there was no First Flame and pyromancy and because humanity came from the Dark, thus they use Dark spells (dark sorcery to be precise, like Manus) like this staff is indicating. I always found it strange (when i played DS3) for the Witch of Izalith to use dark sorceries before using pyromancies but this is their heritage, the heritage of all Humanity, drawing their power from the Dark before the Dawn and Age of Fire.
Although I've read somewhere that the witches of Izalith are a separate race. And it makes sense. They got a separate great soul and don't give humanity upon death. But the notion of nature/shamanism and humanity being linked is interesting, nice find
@@SolidAlloy2 They may be human in the sense homo habilis, homo sapiens neanderthalensis and homo sapiens sapiens are all humans, but not the same kind of human.
@@BigBadWolframio so, the root species in dark souls is never named. the closest we get to a name for them is "hollows", which is what happens when you're drained of your soul in dark souls, essentially reverting you to what the pre-fire humanoids would've looked and acted like.
however, each of the major humanoid races then descends from a lineage defined by their soul. giants have different souls than gods, which have different souls than humans, which have different souls than witches. in fact, the implication of calling the first human "the pygmy" is that the only difference between the pygmy and gwyn, the witch or nito before they found the lord souls was that the pygmy was small.
your species in dark souls is defined by your soul, with humans having the dark soul, gods having gwyn's, the witches (of which only quelana, the fair lady, quelaag, ceaseless discharge and the unnamed witch outside the bed of chaos remain) have the soul of the witch of izalith, and finito and milfinito have the soul of nito.
if you want further proof of this, the species can and do interbreed, despite being radically different in their properties, sizes and abilities. the dancer in 3 is a descendant of the gods and men, for example. their bodies are all the same, it's the soul that makes them different.
@Yal_Rathol I would disagree with that to a degree. Similar to the dregs Hollows appear to result from a lack of humanity and thus would be the inversion of what humans naturally would be before they were essentially tricked into being fuel for the flame.
The Witches are the daughters of the Witch of Izalith but it's rather unclear if they weren't also humans before attaining the soul.
@@SolidAlloy2 It's Eingyi who refers to Quelana as a non-human whitch.
14:50 - I was going to say that, given the Dark Souls historical-cycle by which civilizations are kind of buried under other, newer kingdoms, it's possible the stone circle and grave weren't located in a cave at the time it was built.
True, but caves are such well known sacred sites of prehistory.
This is the first video of ta’s that I saw the archaeological reference coming before the explanation! I live in England near Dartmoor and there are a lot of stone circles on the moors, I can specifically think of a stone circle by Gidleigh that has stones looking very much like Manus’ boss room lol
Lucky you that you can visit such places so easily
@@tarnishedarchaeologist just wanted to say I just found your channel and, man, this is a gold mine! It looks made just for me! Keep cooking brother! Got yourself a new sub! God bless ya and Jesus loves ya!
I think it's a misnomer to consider humans, gods, giants, and even the witches of izalith to be wholly different species. It seems to me, at least from the one image depicting men approaching the fire, that it's likely they all arose from one common ancestor, and finding the Lords Souls birthed the lines of gods, humans, witches, and even the resurrected dead in Nito. They're different forms of the same base principle, each given a different aspect of the First Flame.
It gets exaggerated over prehistoric eons, when the gods/giants begin to grow really tall, Nito's necromancers amass generations of corpses, and when the flame fades the Witches attempt to light a new one and birth the Demons. At the point we see the games, it's hard to draw those connections, and instead we just see them as separate species. Even then, we find human-sized witches, gods, and others.
I think the gods, Gwynevere in particular, are very interesting. If she was literally the size depicted in Anor Londo, then it's likely she's either the origin of the giant race entirely, or her mother was a member of the race.
Early Anor Londo has cloranthy flowers as the symbol of Gwyn's magnificent sun. Most of the stone coffins in the Tomb of the Giants, where the Gods are buried, have cloranthy flowers engraved on them.
Some of the destructible object skeletons buried in cloranthy-engraved caskets are half-human, half-dragon. If the world before the first flame was just crags, archtrees and dragons, then all other fauna (including humanoids) evolved from flame-mutated dragons over many generations.
But was it hundreds of generations or hundreds of millions? We will never know.
@@xbomb87how do you figure the skeleton beasts are half dragons?
@@tobiaslundqvist3209 Not the skeleton beasts, I mean the inanimate skeletons for decoration that are destroyed by rolling through them
@@xbomb87 ah, thanks för the clarification, will have to look into that!
@@xbomb87 Hi guy! Can you point me in the direction of these decorative dragonhybrid skeletons? I've been lookin around but I can't find any.
I spent the last week and a half bing watching your entire Elden Ring series and it's one of the best things I've ever watched. It changed the way I interpreted the narrative, appreciate the art and stoked my dying, smouldering fire of curiousity.
7:58 i disagree.
manus's grave site being so atypical is likely a lore-based decision. the reason we can assume that is because other graves in dark souls are usually burial mounds, naturally formed caverns or simple pits dug into the dirt and marked with stones.
the concept wasn't fleshed out when DS1 came out, but by the time of DS3, we would eventually learn that humanity has a class system, and at the top of the hierarchy are "the pygmy lords", direct descendants of the furtive pygmy who found the dark soul. they are the kings and queens of humanity by birthright and generally have the most powerful, most pure dark soul fragments dwelling in them.
the implication of manus being "primeval" is that he was one of the first humans. that means he must either be the furtive pygmy, or one of their direct descendants, one of their family that was the first imbued with the dark soul.
this is further emphasized with his name, "manus", which means "hand" and is the root word for "man" and "mankind".
whoever manus was, he would've been immensely respected in his day, so him being buried in a special gravesite molded out of the stone with massive stone pillars marking it actually makes a lot of sense.
it also makes sense that humanity would stop burying their dead that way, since with the advent the age of fire, gwyn begins sealing the dark soul within the darksign, meaning the magical ability to use the dark soul to mold the stone and construct the specialized stone pillars would've been lost. cultural shifts away from worshipping the dark and into worshipping fire also mean that humans would've lost their desire to bury their nobility in special places or special ways, since the nobility contained more dark soul and thus would've become more and more disliked as gwyn took control of the world.
I don't think Gwyn created the darksign until the fire started to fade. It was his backup plan to insure that _someone_ would always try to link the fire and never allow it to fully fade.
@@Greywander87 the ringed knight set says he branded the human knights after the war with the dragons, and one of the dragon-head shields says that humanity's heroics went unsung because gwyn feared their power.
that is long, long before the fire started to fade.
@@Yal_Rathol Very nice rebutal.
Latin "manus" has no relation to the word man, which is from the PIE root *mon-. It bears a similarity to the root *men- meaning "to think".
@@PlatinumAltaria manus's etymological roots are hotly contested, so i dunno how you could say for certain what PIE root term it comes from.
With both the idea that there is a great span of time between the first flame being found, and the different groups being created. And the war with the dragons.
And the revelations given in DS3.
I think there is an easy way to square "manus as furtive pygymy" and the pygmy lords.
After all, Manus could have been the furtive pygmy. But it was the pygmy lords who participated in the war against the dragons.
Manus having died, and been buried in the caves they lived in. Long before the war with the dragons and the age of fire.
Inside the Caves of the land that would eventually become lordran. To be found by Oolacile a long time later.
Oolacile, New Londo, Anor Londo, the Tomb of the Giants, and Izalith. All the places representing the peopole of the fire, and the four lords.
And the ringed city, far away at the end of the world, where the Pygmies would come to live in.
Perhaps the Oolacile Sanctuary represents not just the comemoration of the discovery of Manus, Humanity Sprites, and their attraction to flame.
But perhaps the rediscovery of their nature as beings of the Dark Soul.
This puts an interesting spin on the "Furtive" part of the Furtive Pygmy, and how catastrophic this moment of first contact wound up being
Arguably catastrophic, the cycle of fire and dark appears to be perfectly natural and not overly harmful to humanity. It's harmful to those beings born of light, which humanity are distinctly not.
Bro you and Drewmora (TES lore) are the best lore channels on TH-cam.
Check out charred thermos if you are into Bloodborne. His theory videos are next level
2:36 among us !!!
I love how you link in game story to real life events. This is my fav channel for Dark Souls history.
that is the problem, he doesnt use ANY info that the GAME itself provides to tell ITS story. he tries to somehow shoehorn in irl lore into elden ring or dark souls, who while take inspiration from irl stuff, have their own stories told INGAME via descriptions, item placement, enemy and enemy placement, etc
he isnt analysing ANYTHING in those videos, he is just doing WIILD speculation that is extremely nonsensical
@@ONobreBabuino The developers of the game were inspired by the real world, and somehow you see it as a bad thing to actually examine that instead of pretending the game is a magic space with no connection to anything else. Video games are constantly referencing the real world, unfortunately most gamers aren't that smart.
@@PlatinumAltariai never denied that the devs use real world inspiration, as we see with the gwyn statue in heide being a falcon because its inspired from the sun god ra, who had a falcon head. my problem with TA's analysis is that he tries to fit in stuff from irl which just doesnt make sense in context of the game
and even still, those irl inspirations are minor and help explain certain parts of the lore, like the gwyn statue thing i mentioned. but to the scale that TA tries to portray it to be, it just doesnt make any sense at all
How can you rule out that it's just a lot of confirmation bias?
@@andrewbowen2837 ok, lets use the theme of prehistory mentioned in the video, and let me tell you how much TA gets this wrong.
First, we have to recognize that fromsoft's games are hindered with localization errors which offuscate the script's intention, hence ill be using what the JPN version of the game says, which has the original text, different from the text of other languages like english.
Second, lets look at the cinematic intro. Dragons are beings which predate the coming of souls/disparity, meaning, the first flame. When the first flame came to be, it would only be logical that the dragons, who just "were", would begin to gain states of existence in them given that they now bear the source of life in them, the soul, meaning, life and death.
In order to understand miyazaki's games, one has to imagine that each game is akin to his playground, each thing placed in its position being meant to tell something to the one who is in his playground. Now, lets look at for instance, the horned giant skull next to an archdragon descendant which serves as the covenant chief for the dragon covenant in ds1. This skull bearing horns and fangs being next to a descendant of the archdragons of old already paints us a picture that these horned giants (oni as ds3 would later call them) are too descendants of archdragons, and to further reinforce this, we encounter in the tomb of the giants a giant skeleton that not only walks in four, but also has a dragon-like face and tail, what this tells us is that all biological beings in the world of dark souls originated from the archdragons, who predated life and would be the first to receive life itself, and would eventually reproduce and adapt in multiple environments as we see with for example, the hydras, water dragons.
For further example of this, there are the wyverns, called flying dragons in the original jpn, archdragons who lost their two frontal limbs in favor of bigger wings, or ds2's wyrms, original name land dragons (地竜), or ds3's cut "flying snakes", wyverns from dragon aerie (as seen in their face being identical to that of ds2's wyverns) who became air-only, thus losing their legs entirely. There also are the snakes, who are called in the original japanese "imperfect dragons". This already is a great part of the prehistory of dark souls which TA ignored thanks to not only his insistence in not looking at what the game tells the player and instead shoehorn in real life history in these games, but also thanks to him not acknowledging that dark souls is full of localization mistakes. Another mistake is the "primeval" man he talks of. In the jpn, its just "ancient man", and in reference to Manus, not some weird prehistorical settlement. Meaning, this tells us that Manus was originally a pygmy, an ancient human, before the dark soul IN his body, his humanity, went wild and transformed him into the beast that we fight, known as the "MASTER of the Abyss". (深淵の主)
Now, as to the sequence which shows the lords finding the lord souls, there are things lost in localization too. First, the "they" makes actual reference to "several animals" (幾匹か), meaning, those people who found the lord souls arent like the civilized race we know of ingame, they were more like primitive creatures which were like lions, hornets, hawks and dragons, beings who lived simple lives. Second, the "dark" referenced is unlikely to be the Dark of humanity, the Dark of the Dark Soul, and is way more likely to be just darkness, the absence of light itself, hence why in the original jpn, these creatures were "captivated" by fire, for all they knew was darkness, and seeing something so bright and strange would surely make one who only knew darkness really interested in what that thing would be. This is how the original jpn sounds like:
"And then, some animals which were born from the Dark were captivated by fire and found the Souls of Kings."
そして、闇より生まれた幾匹かが 火に惹かれ、王のソウルを見出した
So, the "prehistory" of dark souls, the period before civilization, isnt that complicated to grasp as TA tries to portray it to be thanks to his way of lore-analysing. Dragons were just there, and since life and states of existence didn't exist, disparity, they just "were". But then, the first flame came to be suddenly, and it brought disparity, the power of disparity itself being souls as the fire keeper in 3 outright confirms, hence why the first flame is also called the source of souls in the jpn dialogue of shanalotte. Since dragons predated fire, they would be the first who would receive souls, thus the first biological beings to ever exist. From then on, since there was now death, life and so on, they had to get around this new era, hence they began spreading around the "lower world" which holds up the "upper world" as we see with the archtrees in ash lake holding up the surface in the tomb of the giants. Beings like snakes, wyverns, wyrms, basilisks, birds, and so on, came to be thanks to the dragons adapting and evolving in new environments. in regards to the humanoids, the most likely evolutionary line is this: archdragons -> horned giants -> giants -> the race of the gods (since they are inbetween humans and giants in size) -> pygmies/humans
then, at some point in history, some humanoid animals which were likely the race of the gods went on to find the first flame in the depths of a cave in the lower world, and since they were born in the dark, they only knew the dark, so in consequence they would be captivated by this bright fire, and close to it, they found the souls of kings, whom they used to establish civilization, with gwyn spreading it amongst his clan. each souls of kings inhibits an element of disparity. if the furtive pygmy is the king of dark, he held the dark soul. if gwyn is the king of the sun's light per his jpn title, he held the light soul. if nito is the grave king, he held the death soul. if izalith gave life to the flame of chaos with her soul, she held the life soul. THIS is the prehistory of dark souls, not what TA said
6:04 actually, today it's basically non-existant. The only real evidence left of Oolacile is Artorias's grave. Everything else has crumbled away entirely or been buried under the Darkroot Forest.
The final excuse I needed to buy the game. Thank you!
Best tip. Dont be afraid to kindle fires and use humanity. Dont hoard it
Don't look nothin' up either! DS1 is really special the first time round
Play blindy, just go with the vibes and good luck!
My advice, don't take any advice.
That really is the best way to play. Just dont catacombs first yourself, i can see that leaving the border of fun and crossing into the “im never playing again” category
When it comes to the circle of statues, the bonfire at the center always felt emblematic of Gywn rather than the flame. In a weird way it is a more metaphorical interpretation of the statue of Gwyn in the ring city. They complete each other. The humanity's draw to the bonfire and the pygmies kneeling to Gwyn. Humanity in Dark Souls wasn't always drawn to the flame the gods bound them to it to control them.
That's can't be right; we know that some pre-flame creatures went up to the flame and found the lord souls. So clearly whatever we were before was attracted to them.
Gwyn found the flame and yet Gwyn has an uncle - therefore the pre-flame creatures had some kind of society. Probably the first flame was affecting the world for millennia (creating life) before it was found.
Edit: Bonfires are wacky. They are made out of the bones of dead(???) undead and they don't have any affect on humans that haven't yet exhibited the undead curse. They act as direct conduits for offered humanity to be teleported to the first flame to be burned.
What motive do undead-fearing human societies have for spreading more of them?
@@PlatinumAltaria Just because 4 out of any untold population where drawn to something doesn't mean everyone was drawn or there would be more lords. But more over, DS3 in the ring city explicitly states Gwyn bound humanity to the flame. He did so to bind and tame our darkness.
@@xbomb87 I don't disagree, Gwyn's crown and cloths and kingdom didn't come out of nowhere but the flame wasn't a rising tide. All ships didn't raise equally otherwise Gwyn and the Gods wouldn't be on top. While the gods and giants built great cities the pygmies were clearly behind in terms of development. Heck, the Pygmies Ringed City at the end of time wasn't even built by them it was made by Gwyn. He and the Gods shepherded humanity giving them the culture that resembles the world we end up playing in. We can even see some of this "humanity is culturally trailing behind" when we compare Oolacile and Anor Londo architecture, which is fair since the former is a suburb of the latter. Both are utilizing historically Italian architecture. Oolacile represents a Roman era architecture meanwhile Anor Londo is Gothic Italian architecture which doesn't pop up until the 1200AD.
The fostering of a dependence on fire started a "new era" for humanity. Prior to Gwyn and the gods changing humanities ways "humans" didn't make stuff like they do today. The ancient humans forged things from the abyss (a now long abandoned practice thanks to the flame.) The binding of humanity was an attempt to forestall a future rival. They turned humans against the dark. The dark which gave them power. The dark that they used to build their society and material objects. That isn't something that would happen in a single generation. The Gwyn statue in the Ring City has the pygmy stripped down before Gwyn not because they were naked apes but because that statue was emblematic of being stripped of their old culture, of the dark, while embracing the flame culture.
A lot happens in the timeline between the flame appearing and the Age of Fire (dragons defeated, humanity bound no more grey or dark only light lol).
@@Writh811 I agree with most of this but afaict Oolacile was a separate vassal kingdom at the time the dlc is set, not an outlying part of the capital. Lordran is compressed in scale to make the gameplay more fun.
Your points really struck a chord with me. I think humanity's true nature is to resist & defy: the point you make that we are all basically descended from an ancestor that was likely a mutant variant that embraced fire rather than run from it hits home
22:44 Not sure if anyone else pointed to it, but it could be signifying a different kind of "First Contact". It could be re-creating contact with "The First Flame".
What a great vid. So good, thank you. Like each of your vids, Hq production, music, video. It takes a lot of work, and each one is a gem. I'm so glad I stumbled over your channel 2 years ago.
Grateful to see you going back to dark souls; I miss the lore. Love your content!
Once again an astonishing video. Not just watching, also thinking about it is a great experience. Keep up the good work, old friend.
I love your videos so much, I think taking an archaeological perspective on these games is really refreshing, and the fact you CAN analyze souls games with an archaeological lens really attests to the fine detail work that goes into the game design and world building. Looking forward to more!
Oh Hell yes
Dark Souls is my beloved. ER is incredible and amazing and wonderful, but I always come home to Lordran...
4:02 among us. 😳
I've always thought that humanity sprites looked like bodies wrapped for burial rituals and that they're ghosts of the original inhabitants who took that shape when arising from their tombs.
TA expanding to Dark Souls? You love to see it.
This has always been a topic thats was super interesting to me but not covered much by any channel so its really nice to have you take a trip back there
15:04 there's evidence that Denisovans actually had a burial practice since there was a skull found on a ledge that a lot of evidence says the skull could've only ended up on it via being set by someone/thing.
What a genius video. It never occurred to me the disparity in architectural motifs throughout the DLC indirectly tells us valuable information about the history of the world.
Manus being a sorcerer-shaman in an ancient time during the early Age of Fire? Absolutely genius.
Thanks!
This video is so masterfully writen and well researched. I love the transistion of seing it from the outside, then going underground to Manus's grave and examing it. Finding explanitions for it. Than going back outside to put it into perpective and putting together a narrative of what it could have been like when the Olicians discovered the origins of humanity. Than transition into a poietic outro of the nature of humanity and it's realtionship with fire. Instant Sub! :)
I swear you haven't been showing up in my subscriptions. I thought you stopped uploading. Very glad this isn't the case.
Been waiting for someone to do the prehistorical side. I find it far more interesting to decode the parts that the game doesn't even talk about in item descriptions
Gwyn is always specifically referred to as a king in the Japanese text, never as a lord. Similarly, the "lord souls" are actually "souls of kings".
The gardeners aren't people turning into plants, but plants shaped by Oolacilian magic similar to the golems they use.
Finally, "may the flame guide thee" is just the generic motto of people associated with the gods, it's just that in the English translation it got replace by "vereor nox" for no reason. It's not exclusive to Elizabeth.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for explaining such a simple yet profoundly fundamental part of the game so clearly. My lord.
You just explained the must fundamental part of the very start of the game. What in the good dang heck is going on with the fire keepers? Besides them being evocative of the Vestals. It feels so obvious now but also so much more meaningful, they're literally living kindling. As is described in game, any sprite can be kindling.
It's funny, I've felt the draw of fire (if you will) this entire time. Every time I played any Dark Souls game I marched right up there and linked the flame. I followed it's light like a moth. Suddenly I want to embrace the dark. =)
And here I thought the story was mostly the poetic Edda and story of Siegund but all of that came much later.
It's ironic that the place were the first flame ignited would be were the ringed city was built on top of. Any chance for an analysis on the Cathedral of blue and Lothric how they share these motivs: the headless knight, the wax covered scholar, the priestess and the hunter?
Sounds to me like you should make a video of your own good sir.
The Ringed City was built as far away from the site of the first flame as Anor Londo could manage to travel, no?
@@xbomb87 doesn't Midirs boss Arena look eerily familiar to the place were the first flame burned in the DS1 intro?
@@whatsnewbois9814 The arena itself doesn't look especially similar to me, but it is interesting how you get there by jumping down the hole, cause it's a lot like the hole in the arch tree hollow from the DS1 intro that the camera flys through. It almost looks like they uprooted those archtrees and built the city on that very land. So yeah you might be on to something here
@@whatsnewbois9814 The entire underworld looks like crags and archtrees, both immediately next to the first flame and as far as possible away from it.
Here we go!
Things like this are why I don't like the Demon's Souls remaster. Great game, etc. but with the changes to the textures, the designs of the zones, even the soundtrack, Bluepoint didn't just alter FromSoft's intent. They altered the game's story and lore. Where FromSoft puts intent behind their creative choices, they would mix materials and architectures from different histories to make a point. Meanwhile, Bluepoint turned a defense outpost that had just succumbed to undeath to a gothic castle that has been abandoned for centuries. The remake looks amazing, it's beautiful, it sounds great. But it changed the story. And I don't like it. Lot's of talk about wanting a Bloodborne remaster - I want one too... but I don't want it, if it would be like the Demon's Souls one.
The only “remastering” demons souls needed was unemulated pc access at 60+ fps and 4k
Demon's Souless demake is a litmus test on who likes slop and doesn't give a fuck about art, simply put. Bluepoint historically always ruined the games art direction with their awful job, and were always defended by idiots
Oh wow, calling probably the best looking and genuinely enjoyable game on ps5 a demake while also calling people who like it idiots is something else 😂 I don’t think the dark souls community will ever stop to amaze me, positively and negatively.
@@tomaszbuat2437 It's a great game, and no matter how much BluePoint butchered the designs, the sound, the music, it's still a good game.
But when you have a studio telling its story through designs, levels, architecture, changing that architecture, design, textures, sounds, etc. IS changing the story.
And if they do the same thing to Bloodborne, you will lose major parts of the story - parts that only exist in textures and deliberate architecture. There's a whole theory that Bloodborne is based on true story, and that theory relies entirely on the level design and purposeful architectural decisions.
BluePoint's Demon's Souls does not have a coherent story. It's just a mess of assets and aesthetics that makes no sense, because it was made by people who don't care for substance. It's a generic AAA-looking release.
@@BobBliborare you joking?😂 The remaster did an amazing job trying to keep as original as possible. And honestly I think that’s where they go wrong, because o.g demon souls is DOG 💩 🤣.
demon souls is really a crap game, its definitely a game people should skip over, but the remaster helps with the headache of playing it
Great video as usual. Love to see more about Dark Souls!
Amazing stuff! Humanities impact on fire and their harvest for fuel has always been fascinating and a good luck at its earliest days is intriguing
I think this may be one of my favourite videos of yours 🔥
A Bearer of the Curse has linked the Throne of Want
Seek seek lest.
@@rainbowkrampus weak!!
Men are props on the stage of life. No matter how tender, how esquit, A LIE WILL REMAIN A LIE!
I'm really stoked to see you going into Dark Souls! I've been following you for a while now and I appreciate the depth of your analysis, your Eldin Ring video showing the tablet in Eldin John's hands blew my mind!
That said, as a former scholar of religious studies - it's deeply unfortunate to hear "shaman" used as a general term. I know how that happened, as Mircea Eliade took the word as an anglicization of "šamán" from the Tungusic peoples of Sibera when he showed up wanting to study and generalize more religions and he was working closely with Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung who both adopted his terminology readily, and then it later got folded into the cultural lexicon of fantasy stories and games and the truth was lost in the face of "common knowledge." The truth of the matter is that it's not a general term, it's an incredibly specific cultural term for a very particular spiritual medium and healer in the Tungusic culture. Having spoken to a woman who had trained for decades in the spiritual arts of her culture, she adamantly asserts she still lacks the proper skill set to be addressed as šamán, and it pains her deeply to hear a title from her living culture that speaks to the great respect due to one of that rank being tossed around as a generic term for animistic spiritual worker.
I can't find a digital copy of the materials she spoke about, but her talk was a joint venture between herself (a Tungusic spiritual worker) and several native Ohlone people titled "Shamanism and Cultural Appropriation: Indigenous Perspectives" from a presentation at Pantheacon in 2019.
Great video! Glad to see you doing Dark Souls content as well as Elden Ring.
I had a sneaking suspicion that the Oolacile sanctuary was representing the furtive pygmy and now I'm convinced I was more than half right. Outstanding video as always. God bless
What the hell? Your videos are so good and I have never heard of you! Glad I eventually found you
Oh shit we are excavating Lordran!!
We've met Dark Souls Manus, now we need to meet Dark Souls Torgo
yo you have no idea how much I've been waiting for this 🙏
Timing is amazing because I’m wrapping up my first Dark Souls 1 playthrough. I’ve completed Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 several times over.
Amazing video once again, bravo!
Big ups to From Software for their commitment to worldbuilding
Mankind did not acquire humanity. Humanity possessed mankind.
I really dig your content and fully believe that you're one of the greats with regards to souls-lore. That said, my heart sinks every time I see something that isn't Elden Ring.
We haven't abandoned the Lands Between, don't worry. Just exploring new sites as we please.
Incredible video as always. Nobody does it like TA
Just what i needed to calm the mind. Thank you!
More Dark Souls? Heck yeah, I'm here for it.
Great video! Can't wait for more.
Manus is halflight from ds3
Here’s why:
1.halflight uses a sorcery that looks exactly like a “light” version of the pursuers sorcery that you can get by exchanging manus’ soul with snuggly the crow. Remember that the people from oolacile used to develop light spells only and manus has dark spells
2.halflight wears a set that reminds a lot of the aesthetic from oolacile (same colors, gold details) and uses a birch bow which is a very used material in oolacile.
3. We can speculate that dusk princess and halflight had a relationship in the past because there are linea of dialogue from dusk that describe that she felt some kind of sadness and familiarity with manus, and we know that halflight visited the ringed city but he never came back again.
4.- the broken pendant from ds1 belongs to halflight and we can acces to the dlc because manus wants it, also we can see halflight wearing it.
5.- halflight served to kaathe, before the midir’s fight there is an altar to the dark or kaathe and also a corpse that is worshipping the altar, the corpse has the halflight set.
Its just a theory but it works on my mind and really resolves a lot of problems with the manus’ lore in general
dark souls is sooooooo fucking good and I love this channel and channels like this that go beyond the lore we all know. I love that you use archeological and art history methods to do your work. as an art historian myself, I very much appreciate this
Dude, your voice is almost hypnotically soothing.
Bless you TA for sharing your vast knowledge and wisdom with us
I’m interested in where this goes. There is definitely some interpretation going on that is different than many agreed upon DS lore theorists. That being said, DS lore is less rigid than Elden Ring’s lore and lends itself better to other interpretations.
This channel is a gem
Btw, I finished playing DSR using Luke Ross VR mod, first time through a dark souls game. It was life changing ;) and is so much more meaningful with this channel. I don't have the right words to describe how awesome the playthrough was, the dread experienced when entering the fog wall to Manus. By far the most difficult fight. I chose not to link the fire...
Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one noticing that Gwyn's army in the intro is that of an advanced civilisation! In fact as you mention, Izalith was also there during this "pre" history. I would guess there were others. Unless the lord souls were arbitrarily required to found a kingdom. Keep in mind, fighting the dragons was presumably thousands of years after finding the flame and the lord souls. That's a suspicious amount of powerful and technologically advanced cultures for a time we are only told is just "grey crags, arch trees" etc. I mean, it's possible that that description only applies to the very early state of the world but we have nothing else to go by, so... yeah I'll assume everything before the age of fire was just that - an ashen wasteland dotted with arch trees and dragons. Because otherwise, if the world above ashen lake was already full of life... then Gwyn's age of fire turns out to be entirely un-spectacular for everyone but the Anor Londo "gods".
Well now I'm convinced the first man to harness fire was munching mushrooms and wanted to take the dancing lights back to his cave
amazing writing.
you have a great philosophy of life and it shows in your works
I’ve always believed that there was a large chunk of time between the awakening of the flame and the discovery of the Lord Souls, it just feels like there’s history during that period that got forgotten
I love this~🔥🔥🔥 I do selfishly want an enir elim episode 😭
All in due time.
I had just assumed the Pygmy naked and crawling represented much like a hollow …ie: both soulless, one having lost and one before finding.
I hadn’t felt the gap in history was animated per se but those were just artistic expression for what the narrator was saying at the moment.
While no megalithic stone circles have been found in caves, ritual circles likely used by Neanderthal were found in Bruniquel Cave in France!
Very true. That nearly made it into this video. Caves have long been sacred places for our species.
"No other mammal is drawn to fire." - I get the feeling you're not a cat owner...
But jokes aside, this is the dream. The Tarnished Achaeologist is going hollow.
I am sure that things here have been discussed before but as I haven't seen them until now it makes me wonder, if no one has brought up some of these points does this video make a certain fromsoft employee feel vindicated to finally have the details they put in the game recognised for their implications after all of these years
When I first came across the Oolacile Sanctuary, I couldn’t help but notice its similarities to Firelink Shrine, both in their structure (bowl shape with bonfire, both appearing to have similar methods of construction and degrees of erosion) and the fact that they sit above a human settlement overtaken by the Abyss. Any ideas as to how they may be related?
Perhaps the linking of the fire is the general connection of fire to souls rather than the specific connection performed to fuel it, meaning that the discovery of fire is also a firelinking and these are both firelink shrines
Just when I thought I was getting over my Souls´ obsession, I guess I'm going straight back it. :D
One does not simply get over a Souls obsession.
Can never get enough of Dark Souls lore.
Awww yeah, something to listen to about my favorite game series while not much to do at work!
Regarding Manus, why the first man, and why the father of the abyss. and what is the abyss.
My thoughts:
The same ancient of the known myths - the myth of Gilgamesh tells of a hero who was strong and mighty, but capricious like an animal. He met Enkidu - who was like an animal. At first they fought, then became friends. But then. Enkidu died. and Gilgamesh first knew death, and UNDERSTOOD that he, too, was mortal.
A similar story with Buda, a prince who knew no evil or grief, began to leave the castle, and knew pain, illness, and death. After which he thought deeply and became Bodhisattva - enlightened. And he taught how to stop being afraid and accept death. *(prepare to die)
In these ancient examples, the main cultural event that made a man (conscious) from an animal (wild man) is his awareness of his mortality.
Manus is the archetype of the first man who knew the "abyss" - non-existence, death.
Therefore, Manus is the first man. A man who realized his mortality.
i.e. Manus is the point of the Evolutionary turning point from ape to man. The beginning of culture.
A man who realizes his finitude has a need for immortality. or rather, to preserve experience. That is why text and culture appear. To preserve knowledge. To achieve immortality of knowledge.
But thoughts of death are scary.
To defeat Manus means to defeat the fear of inevitable death.
i.e. Manus as a monster is the fear of realizing one's mortality, of the abyss. This is exactly what Artoris failed to cope with.
Artoris was afraid. And could not come to terms with it. He despaired. But his heroism consisted in the fact that he gave the shield to Sif, protecting his friend from death, and the fear of death. But he himself remained defenseless before him and therefore suffered defeat. In essence, it was an act of self-sacrifice, to save a friend. Although, maybe Alvina did it? I don't know.
Also, "humanity" in the game (a black humanoid ghost) is blackness, emptiness, death, CONSCIOUS by a human.
A black hole inside the circle of the "cursed sign", surrounded by fire (culture, religion) that holds back the abyss, holds back the destructive power of awareness of one's mortality. This is a cultural barrier from madness, despair, from an existential crisis, from awareness of one's mortality.
But at the same time, this black hole is unbearable. It causes "hunger" (empty stomachs of many in the game.) The desire to fill this emptiness with something. (to come to terms with the awareness of death.)
Hunger that makes you swallow souls. makes you move forward. Thus, this fear of death is the main motivator to accomplish feats.
The great engine of human culture and every person.
Wow. This is my favorite channel on TH-cam.
cant wait for dark souls 2 archaeology
It's very astounding how Souls games are very focused on the story they are trying to tell and its themes, and because of it they still convey so much about both their world and ours. Writing and game design at an incredibly high level, puts even the best of other games to shame.
I’ve only played Bloodborne and Elden Ring - but this might push me to play Dark Souls too to keep up
You definitely should. The original Dark Souls is still something quite special.
Please do!
Elizabeth is the thread that holds all of this together, she even has ties to the Lands Between ❤
She what
@@jeeBisOkay exactly
This egskizo theory again??
And Hallownest
@@allthe1 true
i hope this is the start of even more dark souls content! elden ring is fine, but the world of dark souls just feels so much more fleshed out and beautiful to me, I've loved it ever since ds1 and that's only grown with every game since
I just saw some photos of these structures currently called, "Nileometers." They had a way of reliably confining a small portion of the Nile for accurate measurement of it's flooding. It was a circular tower-like structure with a winding stairway on the inside circumference leading downwards. Presumably you would count how many stairs remained and if you were at the bottom most stair you may need to extend a ruler below to measure the water if it was well below even that.
The circular circumferential stairwell leading down to nowhere was so similar in appearance that I thought I was looking at DS1 concept art for a second. =)
Hi, thank you for the video and I'm big fan of your channel. I just want to correct that the Moai statues are actually facing inwards instead of facing the ocean (20:44)
hello, just letting you know the playlist for this series is ordered wrong, and the 1st episode is the last that plays when trying to watch the playlist. Great video and thank you for your work.
Damn, i think I`ve just discovered this channel. It`s all I ever wanted regarding games !
This was stellar, thank you!
After all, 'with fire came disparity'
12:48 "we can't say much about the precise usage of these stone circles"
Meanwhile, the goats at the left stone are clear about its purpose
I love your work. I believe that Oolacile was well after Gwynn had established his reign. I believe that the Lord Souls and the powers they provided were linked to the idea of a fire. Gwynn received a spark causing a flame (Creation), Gwynn literally uses the power of his flame to create a whole world, a sun and moon, on top of the archtrees, soil and sea, for people to live in. The Witch of Izalith recieved the power of change, fuel to heat and light once the fire is lit. Her powers include creating poisons, making the body iron, even burning your health for more strength. This makes more sense if Pyromancy is changing one thing to another. Air to fire or poison, your skin to iron, or your health to strength. Finally all fires burn out, Nito gains the power of Entropy. He can age and wither, all things coming to an end. Once the fire is out, there is darkness and the Dark soul symbolizes that new future.
“Light the beacons! He hath return’d”
For a moment I thought this was going to be some tin hat video about the lands between being the prehistory of Lordran.
Wasn't that, shame, but still amazing
omfg i am so so so so happy we are talking about the prehistory 3:45 like this. i am so hyped hahaha
YESS 5:00 IZALITH LOOORE omfg yes yes yes pahahha can ya'll tell im excited
6:00 pahaha omg primevil man... i just got goosebumps pahaha
8:20 oh~~~~ my~~~ god. you are so right. he has horn like protrusions. i am so so curious to see how this could relate to the crucible in elden ring
21:41 oooo~ i love how you built up the explanations of societies and their "epochs?" to lead up to the concept of dark soul's first contact with primeval man. i gained a great new perspective of the dlc.
i guess the follow up question would be. now that we know there was a "first contact" event in the game. who made first contact? and what were the consequences?
what if it was the chaos flame?
25:20 we are talking about the first contact with fire. but i am so curious about the nature of the fire. i think, at least the bonfire that we know so well and love, uses human bones, but perhaps the humanity lingering within the bones, as fuel? that's why item descriptions of human bones in dark souls and even elden ring talk of how brittle it is, almost as if all the humanity was used up, leaving just the unburnable bone, brittle and useless, crumbling at the touch. and you mention 24:40 that other animals and beasts do not like fire (also a common theme in fromsoftware games), but why do we love it? why do humanity sprites love it? because they love congregating/aggregating. they must sense some innate humanity in the flames and feel drawn to it. even though the flame is burning at the cost of our humanity.