After a City is Buried

They made themselves shine through the plunder | Directly support me and watch exclusive videos by joining Nebula at go.nebula.tv/jacob-geller
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Forgotten City review by Renata Price: kotaku.com/despite-hype-forme...
Sources:
A Geoarchaeological Reading of the City-Overlap-City Phenomenon in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain: A Case Study of Kaifeng City, China: www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1...
Geoarchaeological evidence of the AD 1642 Yellow River flood that destroyed Kaifeng, a former capital of dynastic China: www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
Born from the ashes: Seattle, a city built atop itself: www.history101.com/born-from-...
When Water Rises: A Journey Through Turkey’s Drowning Landscape: www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom...
Inside The Forgotten Chinese Cities Destroyed By The Three Gorges Dam: www.fastcompany.com/3029421/i...
Immersed Remains: Towns Submerged in America: www.clui.org/newsletter/spring...
The Endless Robbing of Native American Graves: www.washingtonpost.com/magazi...
Hoover Dam Construction: Boulder Dam (Part I) (1931): • Hoover Dam Constructio...
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flynn (2021)
War, Politics, and Society in Early Modern China 900-1795 by Peter Lorge (2005)
Pompeii: The Mystery of the People Frozen in Time (2013, Chris Holt)
Visual Media used: The Forgotten City, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Remember Me, Google Earth Studio, Blade Runner, PBS News Hour
Music used (chronologically): The Girl (Max Payne 3), Run (Hotline Miami 2), Let Us Live, Since We Must Die, Extreme Justice is Extreme Injustice, The Result Justifies The Deed (The Forgotten City), Dogsong (Undertale), We Are But Dust and Shadow (The Forgotten City), Remembrance of Stars (The Forgotten City- MOD), The Timefall (Death Stranding), Titan (Hyper Light Drifter), Rise to the Light (Remember Me), Max- Panama (Max Payne 3), Life is Long, Life is Short (The Forgotten City), Stickerbrush Symphony (Donkey Kong Country 2)
Description Credit: “Resist” by Brandy Nālani McDougall
Thumbnail Credit: / hotcyder
Additional footage provided by Getty
Additional sound effects by Epidemic Sound

[@dillon1037]

"This video has never really been just about a video game..." HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

[@chelleolsen969]

By Talos this can’t be happening

[@themostdiabolicalhater5986]

@@Ivantheterrible495 cringe

[@loC2ol]

@@Ivantheterrible495 finally! We’ve found our people! Praise Talos and all the Nine!

[@7wzz]

Skyrim belongs to the nords!

[@jayjaygolden5123]

@@7wzz Controversial opinion; skyrim belongs to the dragons.

[@antomanifesto]

As a civil engineer who's worked on projects along the Yellow River, as well as Turkey, London, and Venice, I found this video to capture this incredible unspoken feeling of relentless entropy that I've felt working on so many projects. London, especially, can be utterly fascinating and disconcerting in equal measure as you descend into the London Underground and further and further down. During the planning phases of the London Crossrail project, tasked with the mapping and planning of a route for massive, high-tech electrical cables found me creeping through crawl-spaces directly BENEATH London Underground tracks while trains were barreling along, just a foot or two away from my head, separated only by a few beams of concrete. There are so many tunnels beneath London dating from the war, but beneath and alongside those are post-office tunnels, old carriageways from the Victorian days and below those, occasionally, bricks remaining from a Roman ruin and, sometimes, just... a bedroom. Just an old, old bedroom, with rotted out furniture and collapsing walls, somehow in time becoming an appendage to this vast network of history. And then there was the day that we came across a gigantic, cavernous void. The entire city was still directly above us, but while everyone living above assumed their houses and offices were supported by vast depths of concrete and soil, they were actually suspended by unimaginably tall columns of old brick. The space was so huge and dark that even with a torch, you could only see a few feet ahead, and all the while we could hear scores of rats in every direction, while never seeing a single one. Between the darkness, the space, and the columns, the closest thing that it brings to my mind isn't even in reality but fiction... The mines of Moria. All the while, we are there, on just the next construction project in a long line of projects, trying to create progress in a endless history of gradual decay, and all eventually falling to time.

[@JacobGeller]

Hoooooly cow

[@strivingcobra]

Are there photos or more details on the things below london? I'm very interested

[@antomanifesto]

@@strivingcobra I have photos embedded in confidential work documents, so they unfortunately can't be shown around (Transport for London are pretty strict on people not knowing what's down there for security reasons). There's a book on the subject called London Under London that's pretty cool. Dr. Bradley Garrett has also done some really interesting talks/interviews, he's part of a group of people that have semi-illegally gone "cave diving" into these areas, collecting and sharing photos as they can (although they also got in quite a lot of trouble for doing so!)

[@subprogram32]

That's incredible, and also terrifying to think about. :o

[@danielrego81]

@@antomanifesto dude Id pay a lot for a trip down there

[@TheSuperLegoMan100]

Another buried city that is worth mentioning I think - the ancient city of Troy. The city of the Iliad is believed to be number seven of the nine layers of city that have been built upon in Hisarlik, Western Turkey.

[@AK-tr6lo]

And just like the other colonialist excavations mentioned, the man who discovered the site, Heinrich Schliemann used dynamite to blast his way to the lowest layer, grabbed everything that looked valuable and then booked it back to Germany before the authorities in Turkey could stop him.

[@TheSuperLegoMan100]

@@AK-tr6lo You're right, along with his over-excitement which led to him making pretty big reaches when it came to his archaeological finds. for example, he claimed to have found Helen of Troy's necklace and the death mask of Agamemnon. Both turned out to be from the wrong time period. Although in his defence, the study of archaeology was very new at the time, but I guess that doesn't really justify his colonialist approach.

[@googiegress7459]

@@TheSuperLegoMan100 When the primary approach is "SO I STARTED BLASTIN'", yeah, a science in its infancy.

[@AK-tr6lo]

@@googiegress7459 this was the era of archeology that was essentially treasure hunting or grave robbing. Also the bit he blasted through is the layer that may have corresponded to the Trojan war. Sounds like the moral of a folk tale “he delved too deeply and quickly and thus destroyed the treasure he wished to find”

[@lewisirwin5363]

When you say "Number 7", do you mean it's a deeper or shallower ruin?

[@paulisaperson0516]

“When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.”

[@riccardovigneri1891]

Ni

[@RoseRelisnot]

​@@riccardovigneri1891 Ni

[@victoriazero8869]

Ni

[@delta9990]

Ni

[@brandonzhou2233]

Haha you silly knights! I shall utter the words

[@Pimp.My.Forklift]

I think the most interesting part of the Forgotten City is not the retrospective of a long buried city, but the anxiety of a soon to be buried one. It's not common to explore this idea. It reminds of a 2003 Brazillian movie called Narradores de Javé, in which a small village tries to turn itself into a historical heritage so that it will not be flooded for a hydroelectric plant. It is a movie about futile struggle against powers beyond your comprehension.

[@sepiasmith5065]

Oh wow

[@DetectiveOlivaw]

It reminds me of the Herzog documentary where he went and interviewed the people who lived on the slopes of active volcanoes. Anxiety, sure, but also a weird stubborn determination.

[@calebgoodfellowcg]

I still remember when it was just a mod for Skyrim. I’m so shocked it’s a full fledged game now

[@Kris-wo4pj]

@@calebgoodfellowcg same i still have it downloaded on my skyrim save without going into it. But alot of mods nowadays are being turned into games.

[@ivnislykun]

@@calebgoodfellowcg I forgot that it was a Skyrim mod before. 🤦‍♀️No wonder when I watched the clip, I thought that it looked like a modded Skyrim.

[@AcolytesOfHorror]

jacob must have incredible wi-fi if he can still upload underneath all those buried cities

[@nightshadetq2453]

happy to see my favorite video essayists in the same place :D

[@Sm0k3turt]

I love that you are in jacobs comments. Cheers to the good vids

[@taliesinmemmott9158]

Dude, your vids are mesmerising, just thank you for what you do. Your channel got me writing myself and I've never been happier to take a step towards my passion. ❤️

[@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk]

It's wired, that's how.

[@Emppu_T.]

The compound is beneath all of them, and the cable is long?

[@evalopigus6983]

The Discworld series has a book that talks about how Ankh-Morpork's original streets have been built over. As a result it has a sprawling underground labyrinth of subterranean streets and basements

[@googiegress7459]

This is because Pratchett was unable to find out about a thing without writing it into a fantasy book.

[@Yodalemos]

My favourite writer by a long shot.

[@the32bitguy]

@@googiegress7459 You are absolutely correct

[@Bluecho4]

@@googiegress7459 A man after my own heart.

[@scribeslendy595]

I dont know why, but that whole concept has always been the coolest thing to me

[@ludoviajante]

I want to take a moment to praise your writing. It's amazing how well-constructed your scripts are. Without a doubt an inspiration for me. Much love from Brazil!

[@julianoguerradecastro9810]

Ludotraveler and jacob geller?? what is that, a crossover episode!?

[@alessioalencar1100]

Ludoooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[@igorpereira6021]

We need more youtube content with that level of quality in brasil...

[@pedrorocha3222]

Não conhecia seu canal, mas vo seguir aqui pra assistir depois. Sinceramente, se gosta de Jacob Geller já ta meio caminho andado pra fazer bom conteúdo (ps. Concordo que precisamos de mais produtores de conteúdo br com essa qualidade)

[@Klaux]

olá, pessoa amável da internet :)

[@epilepticwizard4800]

A small anecdote that relates to the video, sorry English second language bla-bla-bla... in May of 2019, me and my girlfriend moved into a neighborhood that was about a 3 minute walk from a small river. The entire spot was beautiful. One would think we were living somewhere in a forest yet we were barely a 15 minute car ride from downtown. It was a beautiful spot. We looked into getting our house insured and were shocked to see how high the premium was. They told us that the entire neighborhood got a bump in 2017 because apparently there was a flood that did a lot of damage. Our trusting nature got the better of us and so we believed when the realtor told us that "this type of flood only happens once every half century". Chalk it to climate change, but the first year we lived there, the winter was especially bad. Lots of snowfall about 300 miles upstream the river made it so that when the water melted as spring arrived, all dams needed to be wide open. They said that trying to contain the flow would break the dams. 300 miles downstream here we were. Seeing the level of the river slowly rise. Walking around our neighborhood during that time was weird. all our neighbors were frantically packing their stuff in their car, stacking sand bags around their houses and making sure everything was safe before they inevitably left. It also didn't' help that that week was overcast with lots of wind and rainfall. It was all very ominous. 7 days later the small river that was so narrow we could effortlessly jump across it was now overflowing. Rising from the riverbed and slowly drowning the bench that was about a yard away from it. Even then me and my gf couldn't internalize the fact that we were about to lose our home. It's a weird feeling. We saw it coming, we took every precaution wisdom dictated, and yet we held on to hope because "that type of shit only happens to people on tv". Well one day we came back from groceries and our basement had flooded with about a foot of water. From then on we knew that it was time to get out. We got into our car that was already packed in case we needed to leave in a hurry, left all the stuff we couldn't take with us on the second floor and got the hell out of there before we were trapped. 5 months later I came back to get some stuff. My neighbor at the time had a boat so he asked me if I wanted to come with. Seeing my old neighborhood under 7 feet of water was otherworldly. To cut a long story short, I sometimes go on google maps and look at our old neighborhood, It is now almost completely drowned. But this is the punchline of the story: There are new houses in some of the parts that survived, people keep coming back to that spot, thinking they are special somehow, just like we felt when we foolishly moved in. I guess the point of my story is that me and my gf were just like the people in a forgotten city. Oblivious to the past and thinking that we were the main characters of the universe. Not realizing that the same flooding had been happening for so long people forgot it was a thing.

[@morriskaller3549]

Holy shit where was this?

[@JD-wi2kg]

Tell us where this was or I'm calling bullshit

[@okeus]

your english is phenomenal

[@ry1023.3]

@@JD-wi2kg I mean this is more frequent than one would think

[@Sashazur]

Moral of the story: never live in an area that’s had a flood or has a high risk of flood. You had the info, but like you said, you decided it wouldn’t happen to you.

[@qpalzm563]

This hits extra hard seeing hundreds of houses buried under lava in one of my islands, La Palma. Loved this video.

[@officerdonut7066]

Palmero identificao

[@VideogamesAsArt]

I was thinking the same thing! This video came out just a week or 2 before the eruption.

[@tristanneal9552]

This feeling is exactly what made me fall in love with Archaeology. If you ever have the good fortune of visiting the Vatican in Rome, look into a private tour of the Vatican Necropolis (it's free but needs to be booked in advance). Many people may not know this, but the Vatican is actually build on thousands of years of tombs and cemeteries that used to be above ground public parks, but that have been gradually buried with the relentless course of time.

[@christophfalk718]

Played the game when it was still a Skyrim Mod, glad to see the developer came so far with such a great idea

[@shrimpin_shlick]

Same here, was pleasantly surprised when I found out about the game. Gonna have to play it sometime

[@badwolf4239]

*"RICHES BEYOND IMAGINING"*

[@amp4105]

ironic calling it his idea when

[@micahjones7837]

I knew it seemed familiar! It was probably the best Skyrim mod I've ever played tbh

[@toffeethedev]

The Forgotten City (Skyrim Mod) was a damn masterpiece and easily one of the few locked-in permenant memories I have in games, and this video made me appreciate it SO much more!!!

[@micahjones7837]

So it was the same! I thought it seemed familiar

[@existingdark]

I find it really odd how much people praised the mod because I, personally, hated it. I came upon a very uncomfortable situation very early on for exploring what I felt was a nifty little secret and then the "golden rule" morality tried to tell me not to act on what was a VERY vile atrocity. I did so anyway, I got the bad end, and I said fuck this mod.

[@HolldollMcG]

Agreed! The mod was a pure genius stroke, and I was beyond thrilled to find out it became a whole game on it's own. I bought the game and immediately fell in love.

[@jeremiemordor7821]

@@existingdark Late to the party here, but may I ask what the situation was?

[@existingdark]

@@jeremiemordor7821 The "Mayor" had been keeping another man's wife who had disappeared captive for repeated sexual assaults. If you choose to free her or tell the husband, they both will react violently and kill him (rightfully so) for this, and trigger the "golden rule". Your only "choice" to continue the game/mod then, is to willfully ignore the situation and allow further abuse to happen. And honestly fuck that.

[@pegoteorr5228]

Watching this video now there’s currently an active volcano eating people’s houses in La Palma in the Canary islands feels very haunting

[@VideogamesAsArt]

I was thinking the same thing! This video came out just a week or 2 before the eruption.

[@KraftBrotHD]

This concept of cities built on cities also appears a lot in my favorite book series, the Malazan book of the fallen. I'm definitely going to play this game now, thanks once again for a great recommendation!

[@justingray8919]

Oh my word I fucking love Malazan! You read his latest book?

[@youradhere3476]

I LOVE that series, second only to Book of the New Sun. Always unreasonably happy to find it referenced out in the wild.

[@strivingcobra]

I have never heard of those books. How many are there?

[@justingray8919]

@@strivingcobra they are absolutely amazing!!!! His main series consists of 10 books, then he has the prequel Kharkhanas trilogy and just recently he released his first book in his "sequel" trilogy. The author is Steven Erikson and it's a shared world he writes with his friend Ian C. Esslemont who wrote a bunch of spin offs which I also totally recommend :-)

[@kseriousr]

@@justingray8919 I've heard conflicting things about the series, how it can be exahustingly inaccessible to casual readers. I still bought them, waiting in my to-read list 😅.

[@littleblu33]

I come from flood country, so this video is especially striking to me for a lot of reasons. The dominant reason, I think, is the dichotomy between things that have been buried and things that have been dismantled. For every leveled city or city that has fallen underwater or underground, there are 10 more that have been abandoned or destroyed without a single hint at what used to be. There's a lake near my home with an entire town beneath it, but meanwhile, I will never see my grandpa's childhood home in Vanport, and my grandchildren will never see my childhood home, either. They're gone, destroyed by water and then leveled, seen as a total loss and more valuable as empty land for water to flow over than as places where lives were led. It's incredible, really.

[@Miss_Trillium]

Vanport is a real tragedy, and from what I learned a preventable one too. Portland remains, built atop old tunnels and other buildings, carrying on as if an entire neighborhood wasn't razed by the river that the city surrounds

[@christopherwilliams6848]

Funnily enough, I've been working an internship with a group called Treatied Spaces, who are looking to produce maps of North America that use only indigenous place names. That bit about the burying of Native American settlements spoke to me. Thanks for making this, Jacob.

[@pheonixrises11]

I hope the map making goes well and that you enjoy your internship!

[@Chainville]

Thank you Jacob. As both an archaeologist and a ~gamer~ this video is custom made for me! I love the presentation and artistry of the archaeological remains and the game’s city. What you capture is the capacity of people to rebuild on the past, consciously appropriating and, as you say, adapting the past. These places are called palimpsests and they are ubiquitous in the ancient and modern world. Memory and places are incredibly important in human identities, arguably part of the reason we keep rebuilding on these same places over and over again. Further, identities can be made manifest counter to their historic past; who tells the story can justify colonial occupation often. More so, your discussion of grave robbing and indigenous erasure through active and passive colonialism is exactly the kind of science communication that we desperately need in, at least, American education. Thank you for cultivating these topics and presentations so well over these last few years. As always, I look forward to your next video.

[@charlesatanasio1622]

Proof that games are art and history, yes? :)

[@mossbride]

It reminds me of tenochtitlan whose lakes were drained and was buried to build the city Mexico

[@Araneus21]

The very concept of building upon that what was once built but collapsed is a fantastic idea and a reason as to why so many cultures ans sites have not been discovered yet... as they lie beneath our very feet, below the streets we walk upon every day. I'd also like to ask about something not talked much upon, the idea of crypto-colonialism. It's when one group of people infiltrates other groups, learns about them and tries to pass as them or when their number grows, demand representation in politics, getting into positions of power and changing the culture being infested by them to be more suiting for the crypto-colonialist's way of life and more beneficial to them, slowly turning the infected culture into a work-caste while being effectively run by crypto-colonialists without the need of conquest. It's something observable throught history but hardly ever mentioned.

[@niall_sanderson]

This got me thinking about my own city, Ottawa. The official history is that it's a baby by city standards, founded just under 200 years ago as a small logging town to take advantage of the vast red and white pine forests further up the Ottawa river, and only starting to grow in importance when Queen Victoria supposedly declared it the capital of the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada in 1857 (in reality, Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, decided on making Ottawa the capital). Based on all that, you wouldn't think that there'd be much of anything buried underneath. But that official story hides the fact that the land it sits on was taken rather brutally from the Algonquin Anishinaabe, who fought constant wars with the Haudenosaunee, Wyandot, and other Anishinaabe groups, and who had already been in this area for centuries when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain first arrived in 1610. On top of that, the oral history of the Algonquin very specifically describes their migration from the east to this area. Considering that this part of Canada has been continuously inhabited since the Champlain sea (named after the previously mentioned Samuel de Champlain) drained ten thousand years ago, it's quite likely that there were OTHER groups that the Algonquin Anishinaabe encountered on their way here. So while it may not take quite the same dramatic form as the buried cities in Europe, Africa, and Asia, Ottawa and many, many other cities in both North and South America have just as much history buried underneath them as places like Edinburgh, Rome, or Kaifung. And for Canada specifically (and presumably almost every other country in the Americas), what we know only scratches the surface, thanks to concerted efforts by past Canadian governments to wipe out the many indigenous cultures here. It's only really been in the last two or three decades that many Canadians have actually started to reckon with the bones and ghosts this country is built on, and it'll take many more decades for the old colonial mindsets to be broken out of.

[@ThatGezaDude]

Kind of mindblowing to think about how many historical events and human struggles of great significance happened with no written accounts left behind. Millennia of wars, conquests, foundings and tragedies, all forgotten before written history was fairly recently invented.

[@twinbruisesonmyshins]

i cant tell you how much i appreciate seeing canadian who seems to actually care about this. im native (south) american, but i live in quebec where even suggesting that racism towards natives is deemed disputable to the government. it greatly upsets me. i really hope more canadians become aware of just how awful these things were, but also how *recent* they were. there are people alive today in their 40s and 50s who remember being in residential schools, there are children now who can say they do not have clean water to drink, and families being torn apart because of the racism they experience just for existing here. ive visited native reserves in quebec city and surrounding montreal area (i live just across the river from oka), and a lot of them do cultural stands at fairs and festivals, and though they have so much to be angry for i greatly appreciate the graciousness to still offer to other canadians the chance to engage learn from their cultural practices and beliefs. on a more personal note, i personally do not think i can forgive my own provincial government. i bear so much shame, in a way. i remember there was a sign on the church doors in my town, reading that "religious patrimony is sacred" (it was a provincial campaign to fund the restoration of churches in small towns), just behind the steps covered in little kids shoes. it was appauling. after a couple weeks, the shoes were put away, but the sign somehow stayed

[@lulzdragon7339]

@@ThatGezaDude 99% of humanity's existence and activity occurred in prehistory.

[@solsystem1342]

​​@@lulzdragon7339 Humanity (re homo sapiens) by lives lived or by time lived centers much closer than you would except. I forget the exact date but you'd certainly be looking at 10% or more of people living in history. Oral or written. In fact, 4%(ish) of all humans who have ever lived are alive today

[@hobbithunter1]

Excellent video. Coming from the Dine (Navajo) and living in so-called America, I appreciate your inclusion of the struggles that Indigenous peoples face when defending their land. It was honestly the last thing I was expecting, but it parallels the atrocities other civilizations have faced with grave accuracy. It's great to see this type of research being made and carefully written with such captivating narration.

[@jammyydodgeruwu2083]

Bloodborne has a pretty cool buried city concept, Yharnam being built on the ruins of old Yharnam, then the Pthumerian cities etc. etc. Each city being burned down to lay the foundation of the new one as the humans clime higher to the heavens. The game plays with so many ideas like the idea of ascension, the mountain of corpses that is ambition, and zealotism. I would love to hear what you have to say on the masterpiece that is this game.

[@Cotac_Rastic]

Same thing for the castle of Lothric in Dark souls 3. A fortress built on a mountain that turned into a city, and then an empire.

[@christiancrome2620]

Regarding the deliberate flooding of settlements: a similar thing happened in Wales, when a reservoir was built to supply water to Liverpool. I can't remember if it was one village or multiple, but the image of a village sitting submerged on the bed of a giant lake is a haunting one, especially considering the circumstances that led to it. Enthralling video as always by the way

[@profeseurchemical]

its just the one village, and the people were given new homes, but its the idea that you can be forced out of your hometown just because some people in a city feel theyll enventually need more water... we in wales have the one example and it became part of our national myth, this kind of thing happens constantly in the usa and noone bats an eyelid. it shouldnt happen to anyone anywhere, but in the context of ongoing colonial violence it is especially insidious.

[@fjordling]

The village was called Capel Celyn, and was flooded by the Liverpool City Council (in England) going directly to Parlaiment, which allowed them to bypass both the Welsh government and the local Welsh authorities. It was one of the last majority Welsh-speaking villages in the area, and roughly 70 people lost their homes, and also their graveyard, school, and church.

[@chrissimpson7634]

Cofiwch Dryweryn.

[@wusenrob]

Two things : - You didn't talk about the creepy statues enough - How the hell do you get all these video ideas? Mostly in the way you link so many subjects in one video, it's very impressive to me

[@evanprince3875]

I somehow connected my favorite movie to a completely unrelated essay prompt. Sometimes the connections stick out to you when you form a connection with a piece of media.

[@googiegress7459]

Everything you read, watch, learn, becomes a part of you. Filed away, mostly, and eventually. But some material for whatever reason bonds with your higher thinking like amalgam to your tooth. And instead of finding it on file, or not, when you search your mind, it is simply there front-and-center unbidden and inescapable. Or you speak a phrase or make a decision and only after do you recognize that the source was this bonded material and not "you". And looking deeper you realize everything "you" are, in the sense of what you produce from within yourself, is some faint light of basic humanity shining through these multiple layers of material. Without these formative experiences you are nothing. Have the wrong formative experiences and you have been nurtured into a villain. The next book you read could be the one that changes your life forever.

[@Bluecho4]

@@googiegress7459 ^This. I've accumulated so much intellectual cruft - relics of past hyperfixations that stuck in my brain - I end up unearthing it when I do creative work. I might hold onto ideas I got from other things - media I consumed, history I learned, bits of philosophy and symbolism and MOOD - for years, always trying to find a way to bring it out. An alchemical mixture that combines and separates, old with new, until something unique comes out.

[@whostolethecookies8512]

Growing up in the Tennessee valley it always felt so strange to go to a lake and see historical info-boards about how less than a hundred years ago the place I was just swimming through was a little town. There's so many just everywhere around there, honestly you'd be forgiven for thinking it was T.V.A.'s entire purpose. Its always been hard to wrap my head around, I just wonder, what would I do with the rest of my day if I got the news that soon the house I grew up in was about to be at the bottom of a water reserve along with all its neighbors? What will whoever comes after us think about me when they find the skeleton of my home down there somewhere? Deeply unsettling, makes a person feel small... Another classic vid though, luv u JG

[@hughcaldwell1034]

I would for sure spend that time writing disconcerting things like "Get to the surface", "Look behind you" and "They come up from below" on all the walls.

[@whostolethecookies8512]

@@hughcaldwell1034 underrated strategy, if its going down anyway you might as well deliver one last prank on whoever stumbles on the wreckage, might be the most human thing to do in that scenario lol.

[@5000mahmud]

If it's recorded, they'll probably be able to look up the history of your home. I think the era of unearthing ruins manually is gradually coming to an end, for new developments at least. Eventually we'll get to the point where everything is recorded in a database somewhere.

[@kelteckin]

Yep tva got us too arkabutla Ms was in oh brother where art thou as the flooded home. The woods I've spent my life in and my family have been in since the 1860s are full of foundations and family's relocated and left to go wild as a wildlife reserve that noone even looks twice at the pile of tin or lumber that was once someone's home.

[@deanought3695]

@@kelteckin I barely understand what you're trying to say.

[@MarquisdeL3]

Oh! I live near Albany, NY which has a pretty cool example of cities under cities. At the top layer is the modern city and as you go down you'll see back through the past of the US, and eventually you'll hit the English Colonial city. But in 1970's when they were building the interstate (this is recent in historical terms), they did an excavation and found the remnants of Fort Orange, the Dutch settlement. It dramatically changed how historians understand the Dutch history of New York. There's a really cool display in the Crailo historic site that demonstrates how the layers would have looked.

[@EmissaryofWind]

I remember playing the mod, it was fantastic and I'm glad the creator is now developing his own games, this concept of cities under cities is one I've always found fascinating so I have to check this one out. You do have a knack for finding topics and concepts that are in the back of my mind but I've never taken a real dive into and putting them into words

[@greyfox4838]

this channel is already shaping up to have a very deep catalogue of videos about cities, their architecture and people, and their temporal relationship with the space around them on another note, your video about forests and the one about caves was also really great, I wonder if you'd ever make a return to analyzing natural environments in video games again

[@hamd8375]

When you first mentioned the forgotten city I thought "this is pretty neat" but as you explained it, it began sounding familiar then when the voice said "the many shall suffer for the sins of the one" I instantly remembered why it sounded so familiar. That was one of the best skyrim mods, glad they made it a game

[@rorysyers8457]

I used to work at the Roman Museum in Canterbury England, the museum was built on top of a roman pavement that was discovered after a World War II bombing. I haven't thought about that pavement since I stopped working there until your video.

[@meistomeytombo]

The core value of your videos and your channel is perfectly summarised when you said: "This video has never really been just about a video game..." love your work, keep digging deeper :)

[@KaydeArcane]

I'm so glad to hear you give mention to the struggles of the native americans trying to stop line 3. After you brought up the flooding of cities and towns caused by the construction of dams, all I could think about was how so many of said dams disproportionately took land from native americans. The closing comment about a civilization claiming to be a place without sin sitting upon a stack of conquered and colonized civilizations that came before it that it never tries to recon with is extraordinarily powerful in this context.

[@Sillimant_]

well if they live closer to a river or whatnot than other groups do, no shit they'd get hit more

[@saoirseoceallaigh3387]

@@Sillimant_ but they don't, almost all of the major cities in the US (and the rest of the world) are on or very close to a significant body of water. Around 40% of the US population lives near the coast, and there were many Native tribes that lived there before being forced inland

[@amefuraggamuffin]

Thank you for bringing up pipelines. My family used to live in the Eeyou Istchee, where several dams flooded our territory so the people in Quebec could sell excess hydroelectric power over the border. We tried to fight it in the courts in the 60's/70's but we're poor after centuries of colonialism. They dangled money infront of our leaders and eventually, they won. I now live in British Columbia, where TC Energy and Trans Mountain (formerly Texas oil company Kinder Morgan) are building pipelines across our unceded territory. Trans Mountain has already spilled hundreds of thousands of litres of crude oil on our land. It's important to remind people that these pipelines are not to address rising oil consumption, much like the hydro electric project in eeyou Istchee, they're for export. The reason trans mountain cuts through indigenous territory is so that it can get to the coastline where it can be shipped overseas.

[@PennyTheGoblin]

My favorite game series ever, Thief (The Dark Project/Gold, The Metal Age, and Deadly Shadows -- we don't need to talk about the 2014 reboot), has similar "cities upon cities" in its lore and levels, and lots of what you said in this video essay ties in with what you learn in Thief. (Spoilers ahead) The city that nearly all of the levels take place in is merely called "The City", and through the bits and pieces of lore that you hear in passing conversations and read in books, old notes, and the cryptic texts that appear in the briefing videos for each mission/level, you get the sense that The City has built upon itself time and time again. In some cases it's quite obvious -- one mission in the first game literally takes you to "The Lost City", an ancient precursor civilization that was destroyed in a Pompeii-esque cataclysm, where various crumbling scrolls tell you about the final days of the people who lived there. The city was buried under rock and dirt and ash... and then The City was built on its remains. In the third game, you enter the Sunken Citadel, yet /another/ city below The City, which experienced its own cataclysm (of which you can, again, read about in various books and scrolls during the mission). Two cities, with rich cultures and histories, buried underground, and an entirely new City is built upon both -- and hardly anyone in the games know of their existences. The City itself isn't immune to it either -- buildings and streets and entire city blocks are built upon older sections of the city, and the Keepers (a secretive organization in the game) refer to The City in ways that almost imply that it's living and breathing, like it's repeatedly building upon its own self in the same way that we would shed dead skin and grow a new layer. Common citizens in The City seem to be vaguely aware of the ephemeral nature of where they live, making passing remarks about places popping up overnight, of streets older than the buildings flanking it, and of dark alleyways that enter places that can't be found on a map. Hell, the way you enter the Sunken Citadel is via an old, unused sewer tunnel! Plenty of decrepit understreets, tunnels, and complexes exist throughout the missions, where you stumble upon stories of people /forgotten within a mere generation or two/ of when you arrive. In the third game, Deadly Shadows, you enter a sewer system that reveals an overgrown part of The City, and can read diaries and journals of the people who lived there perhaps only 50 years prior. In the second game, you return to the Lost City, tracking down the Mechanists so you can learn what their nefarious plans are. The Mechanist Order -- a mix between steampunk and art-deco aesthetics, with a generous sprinkling of fascism and eugenicist ideals sprinkled on top -- doesn't seem all that fazed by the ancient civilization that had existed for so long beneath their feet. Some make remarks about how the expedition leaders are obsessed with these ruined, useless tunnels. Others gleefully loot the ancient buildings for its precious gems, precursor masks, and raw materials, not caring much at all about the history surrounding them. Grave robbers and glorified archaeologists, plundering and destroying the already crumbled city. And, much like your remarks in this video on how man-made catastrophes from dams and flooding can wipe away civilizations, there is an irony in knowing that what the Mechanists are seeking would cause the destruction of The City, wiping away all life from it. Until, presumably, it is built upon again, like it always has. And the cycle would begin anew, I suppose. I'm not sure my rambling has much of a point, and looking back at this whole block of text (which I spent... *checks watch*... like, 45 minutes writing up), I realize that I may have spent a whole lot of time and used a hell of a lot of words so I can info-dump about my favorite games ever (Seriously, Thief: Gold was the first video game I ever played, and nearly two decades later I still replay the series over and over!). I suppose it's just that this wonderful video essay of yours reminded me so much of these games I played growing up -- every few minutes while watching I'd think to myself "oh wow, that's just like that one moment/conversation/readable item/context clue from Thief! Wow!" To this day, any story or setting with cities built upon ancient cities, of cultures coming back to rebuild time and time again, even in the face of looming disaster, fascinates me. I played the Forgotten City as a Skyrim mod, and I had no idea until this video that it became its own stand-alone game. I'll definitely be checking out the full release now :) Apologies again for rambling on and writing a whole-ass novella in the comments. I can't wait until your next insightful commentary video!

[@TheCyanSqueegee]

This reminds me of how Dishonored's Dunwall also seems to take on a life of its own and have this sense of history and weight to it, almost like it is a character. I think it's the result of fantastic design and worldbuilding.

[@jessem853]

It’s strange to think about, we all practically live overtop of some form of history which has been buried away by time or disaster. Please oh please keep up the fantastic work!

[@InconstantGlory]

In the end all will be dug up and revealed as it says in the prophecy

[@FirstDagger]

@@InconstantGlory ; The question is, are you just reading the top layer interpretation of that "prophecy"? Or are you projecting your own Zeitgeist onto it?

[@InconstantGlory]

@@FirstDagger I mean, it’s almost impossible to not.

[@hedgehog3180]

A few years ago in my city they discovered that the current medieval cathedral had just been built on top of the old church and that the altar of the cathedral is right on top of the old alter.

[@joelwilcox5424]

Coruscant has always fascinated me in this way, with its over 5000 levels, divided by class and time

[@annar6634]

Play kotor for more of this if you haven’t

[@Uptomyknees]

Your delivery is just 10/10 A+ Good Shit

[@_LocalGhost_]

I enjoyed this video, especially the part about colonialism and archeology. You touched on it lightly, but I'd have liked if there was a deeper dive into how people mythologize morality, the law, the state, and nature in order to make sense of senseless destruction and violence. And how in turn that results in people not critically examining the societies they live in, leading to repeated tragedies, new graves on top of the old. Perhaps that would have made the video too long though, idk. Again, great video, this just didn't quite scratch my itch all the way, though it did come very close.

[@dopaminecloud]

Ideally we'd remember history so as to not repeat the mistakes of the past, but the actual decisions and broken ideals of the past get largely forgotten. Mainly by willfully sweeping it under the rug and never acknowledging the warning signs lest we face social repercussions. The superficiality of culture is what remains and is arbitrarily gutted and preserved like heads in jars. And we learn nothing from it. We take it in as just a superficial aesthetic. Pretty roman columns. Impressive heads sculpted into a cliffside. Antique cool diesel engine.

[@Legority]

I love how lots of that flying-over-landscapes footage was filmed in Microsoft Flight Simulator

[@MrRico2xy]

These videos remind me so much of the best academic writing I know. The way you weave together games and reality, affects and theory, really shows a deep insight into art.

[@Donteatacowman]

I really appreciate how your videos are essentially spoken word poetry. I don't game and am never familiar with the series that you talk about, but your work is still so impactful.

[@pedrocerda6574]

Same I literally haven’t played any video games in years but his videos make me feel so deeply they hit a part of like my soul that doesn’t often get affected by media he rules

[@TeTaongaKorora]

Thing good. Thing very good. Tino Rangatiratanga

[@Oceaniz]

From a small Skyrim Mod to a full blown Steam game featured in a Jacob Geller Video.. what a glow up The Forgotten Cities has had

[@subprogram32]

This deffo made me more interested in the Forgotten City, that premise and setting seems super interesting! Might try to check it out once I have actually played through Psychonauts 2 and have the hard drive space to spare. Very good work indeed! ^w^

[@assortedlost]

This reminds me of finding tunnels under downtown oroville as a teenager. I was in the masonic youth programs and found a door in the basment of the masonic temple. It led to a tunnel under the main street. Was really cool but I was warned not to go in and they put locks on the door to keep us from going down there.

[@ALtheBoi]

The older I get the less cool "treasure hunting" becomes, just glorified graverobbing

[@dopaminecloud]

With how often it was done by certain empires simply pillaging artifacts to then display in their museums, miles and miles away from the origin, it's a bit cynical indeed.

[@nurailidepaepe2783]

if it's any consolation, when i say i'm going on a treasure hunt i mean pretty rocks and cool sticks and bird feathers :)

[@foliomagi555]

I've found a few arrowheads etc. in my time, but I regret picking them up and only hunt for smalltime fossils now, myself. Cool snailz 4 lyfe

[@foliomagi555]

​@@maxthibodeau3627 Dead people certainly aren't gonna care, but live people will. It's harmful to take culturally important objects away from the culture that owns them

[@amp4105]

History repeats itself, its interesting and our curiosity is greater than the needs of dead peoples belongings.

[@ashen_dawn]

I swear every time you make a video I get to add one more game to my "never would have found it myself, but surprisingly meaningful" list. Thank you again for your thoughts.

[@SaszaDerRoyt]

I am an archaeology student living in York, a city founded by the Romans where each subsequent people living left their marks that are still visible today. I've visited Tells in the Levant where over 10 millennia of successive occupations have made cities atop mountains from the simplest Neolithic towns. My only personal excavation experience was in an Anglo-Saxon village buried beneath a modern village, where we saw the remains of continuous sheep farming for at least 1,500 years (still ongoing, in fact we had some of the sheep break into our field and had to corral them back out of the gate lol), probably stretching back another 1,500 years as there were hints of Roman, Iron Age and Bronze Age activity in the lower layers.

[@toavs3977]

Whenever Jacob Geller uploads, I know it's gunna be good!

[@artemis_smith]

This episode reminded me of a show I used to like when the History Channel was still good. I think it was called "Cities of the Underworld." The host would explore everywhere from London (like one popular comment in this thread talks about) and Rome to purely archaeological sites. We've built everything we have on top of everything else we've ever built, often literally. But not just that; we've built everything we have on top of the entire geological history of the Earth, pretty much always literally. There's always more secrets. There's always more to discover. There's always hidden depths.

[@surrealdynamics4077]

This reminds me of a dream I had once, about me walking around in a city where streets were layered on top of old ones to ease congestion. Causing a cyberpunk kind of atmosphere. I know this dream is obviously inspired by those same atmospheres of movies and videoganes, but man it was cool to see, and how dark and neglected it seemed underground.

[@purplehaze2358]

I love how a city was destroyed 6 times, and instead of taking the hint that maybe it’s not a good place to be, they went, ‘how bout we try again?’.

[@zigtar157]

Given your clear appreciation for deep places, and especially buried cities, I recommend you have a look at Fallen London and Sunless Sea. Your mileage may vary with how much you enjoy the gameplay (FL being a free-to-play action based game a la Kingdom of Loathing and Sunless Sea being a fun concept for a roguelite exploration/trading rpg that's a little tedious in practice) but both games have phenomenal writing in a truly creative weird fiction world. It's an alternate Victorian Era, in which the city of London disappeared from the surface one day and was transported deep below the earth to a massive cavern called the Neath, alongside a subterranean ocean. There are plenty of quirky oddities of life in Fallen London which range from practical concerns of living underground, like the acquired taste of wine made from fermented mushrooms, to more unsettling things, like most animals gaining the ability to speak coherently with humans. And the stories that unfold across both games venture deep into cosmic horror territory, especially in Sunless Skies, the much more polished sequel which abandons the Neath for a journey into the High Wilderness, far away from earth. But the reason I strongly recommend the first two games is that you come realize London is the fifth city throughout human history to occupy this exact spot. When it fell, it buried an older city that is all but stated to have been Karakorum, the capitol of the Mongolian Empire. Of course, London also brought its own buried city. One of the stories released just last year involved the discovery of a Roman temple beneath a butcher shop, a remnant of Londinium. And for a long time, one of the favorite activities among fans was figuring out the identities of the first three cities. This is getting pretty long, so I'll cut myself off here, but it seems pretty well up your alley considering the topics you like to cover in your videos.

[@diegowushu]

Batman Arkham Knight had an interesting layering of Gotham, each one going a bit further back. Always found that really fascinating for some reason.

[@RebornHumanoidTV]

This is a really surreal video to watch having just discovered the next Kirby game is about exploring a ruined city

[@liztuber]

i worked as an archaeologist this summer, surveying and cataloguing a bunch of indigenous artifacts from a drained lakebed created by the construction of a dam. part of the work was preventative; meant to deter looters who had been operating in the area for the entire century since the dam was built, every single time the water level went down. it was pretty fascinating. there were plenty of artifacts from both indigenous and colonial habitation in the area, all knocked down and flooded for the sake of the dam.

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

Reminds me of Middle Eastern tels, the origin of the expression “city in a hill.” Here in Israel, when a city is built on a hill, it means that hill is full of earlier, older cities

[@gnosticgalass4696]

fallen london would have fit this video so well, you have london as the fifth city, built upon the remnants of other cities that were destroyed and its people scattered, and its even in a deep dark cavernous cave.

[@Tarnished-bn5gq]

All of this is only part of what makes the Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne so fascinating, as well as unnerving. The prospect of several layers of ruins that are explored, and the end of each dungeon makes you further dwell on the thought of “what if there are more layers below this one that can’t be accessed? After all, some dungeons have 4, even 5 layers, so who’s to say there aren’t more? In side sections of each layer, we can find gargantuan crevices, with rope bridges leading to the treasure, when you look down, you can see the crevice descend seemingly infinitely into the abyss below, further hinting that the layers explore-able, even for 5 layer dungeons, are the equivalent to swimming just below the surface of an ocean. The subconscious, lingering dread of these dungeons are immense because of that, and I’m praying to see this feature expanded upon in further souls games.

[@sidhirshberg5421]

When I was in Prague a couple weeks ago, I went to a place called the Speculum Alchemiae, a secret 15-1600s underground alchemist's laboratory. After the alchemist emperor Rudolf II, the laboratory's patron, fell from power, the place was abandoned, buried and forgotten until 2002, when a flood opened sealed passages and revealed what lay below. I was told during my tour that Rabbi Judah ben Loew, also said to be the creator of the Golem, was the chief alchemist there. Definitely felt strange to be in a forgotten place meant for practicing a discipline that doesn't exist anymore.

[@GimbalLocksOnly]

"Discipline that no longer exists..." Oh my sweet summer child, what do you think you are taking when you swallow a pill? How do you think we came up with beer?

[@LittleRaAnime]

bro seriously, how is listening to you connect dots that I didn't even know existed so satisfying?

[@Xanderqwerty123]

The mixing of social commentary, real world history, and videogame recommendations is why I keep coming back.

[@kostiheinonen8414]

I have had an unbelievable streak of must-watch videos being uploaded over the past two days. Thanks for keeping it going Jacob!

[@blackosprey2219]

I got so incredibly excited seeing a new vid up. You're one of the absolute best video essayists around.

[@dedale2610]

The city of Split in Croatia was originally built from the ruins of the Doclesian's palace. The old city center was entirely carved into roman ruins. Nice video Jacob, as usual :)

[@SamanthaCZimmerman]

your writing is so beautiful it honestly makes me cry regularly.

[@Bluecho4]

This whole video got me thinking of...well a lot of things. D&D a great deal, with its frequent use of forgotten, buried civilizations. The Forgotten Realms, as a setting, is named, not for the societies there "now", but for all that those contemporary cities are built on top of. Entire eras of history, of elves, dwarves, and men, lost to history. I also generally think on how conducive to the D&D experience these kinds of buried cities are. They're ready-made dungeons. The adventure my own family game has been running through, a couple times a year, is based in a village buried by a landslide. Most of all, though, I think of a different D&D adjacent setting: Ravnica, the world city from Magic: The Gathering. A city that fills up the entire world, whose borders are not known. A city grown so large, it allows no wilderness. Guilds like the Selesnya Conclave learned to weave nature into the city through urban planning, just to accommodate the sprawl. A city that, when there was no more room to expand outward, built upwards. Uncountable layers of construction, each one burying the last. I think of the many inhabitants of this world that are shunted into guilds like the Golgari Swarm, Rakdos Circus, and House Dimir, not because they agreed with their values, but simply because the undercity is where these groups reside. You either die, or flee to the surface (if you even can), or you become a member by default. I think of the Simic Conclave, academics and doctors and mystics that live with/in and maintain the buried oceans of Ravnica, which were paved over long ago, or forced down into impossibly deep sink holes. I think about the dead - or near dead - faiths that lay buried. Before the religious imperialism of the Orzhov Syndicate - church and bank and mafia all in one - absorbed or eradicated all competing forms of worship. Wiping away all deities, and leaving only hollow hymns directed before godless shrines, absolution paid in gold or blood or service beyond death. We know there are still priests to forgotten gods. Who knows how many dwell beneath the ground, giving prayers and tending graves buried a hundred fold. I think of the forces that made such expansion possible. The Izzet League, whose unchecked science and industry fueled that growth, and whose mastery of anti-gravity doubtless keep much of the city from collapsing in on itself, just as it keeps sections of that city floating in the sky. I think of the Azorius Senate, an unelected bureaucracy that regulates the zoning of construction, and levels the taxes that dictates who can afford to live on the surface. I think of the Boros Legion, who patrol the streets alongside the Azorius lawmages, and whose martial might is as often focused on putting down populist revolts. And, when needed, will bring enough firepower to bear that can level whole city blocks. How many districts - communities - have been buried by Azorius mismanagement or Boros brutality or wild Izzet experimentation? I think of the Gruul Clans, relics of bygone ages - and survivors of bygone cultures - cast out of native lands by the implacable march of urbanization. How many burial grounds, hunting grounds, and villages of the ones who would be Gruul were swallowed by the constructions? The Gruul Clans are tolerated only by tradition, enforced by ancient magic meant to protect the Guilds from each other. How many Gruul Clans only joined their number to protect themselves from every other guild? How many cultures would have gone extinct - been erased - if they hadn't become Gruul? Is it any wonder that after ten thousand years of this, Gruul want nothing more than to destroy the city? To reduce it all to a mountain a rubble, upon which true wilderness can flourish? Even if they succeeded, would that wilderness remain? Or would it simply become another layer to add to Ravnica's sediment?

[@kibblesoft]

I'm so happy this came out today! I checked your channel earlier and was wondering if the next one would be soon. Excited to watch it!

[@ameliaw9575]

In Chicago, the entire Lakeshore was built on debris from the Chicago fire that just got pushed into the lake. My dad passed by when they were digging the foundations for a new building downtown, and he saw a bunch of bottles and boots and other debris piled up along the edge of the whole, and builder let him take the bottles. They dated back to the middle 1800s. It's really the little mundane bits of people lives getting dug up that gets me the most. Very human reminder of the people that lived before me.

[@thereinthetrees_5626]

This video gave me chills for each of the 22 glorious minuets, amazing work, please keep this up, youve made a fan out of me

[@ShepWinsAgain]

I've been playing through the Mass Effect trilogy again. Theres some similar themes of civilizations built on civilizations. I feel it's one of the more compelling pieces of worldbuilding.

[@rbgg2010]

The driveway of my childhood home had a small part that curved around to the back of the house. I left home as an adult and came back six years later. My dad had a medical issue and wasn't able to keep up with the yard work consistently, and that piece of the driveway was simply gone, buried under six years worth of leaves. One day I decided to make myself useful and rake the leaves off. But a rake wouldn't work. I had to get a shovel and *dig* the driveway out. Year after year, the leaves would fall, decay into dirt, and be reburied under new leaves the next year. Grass and weeds would take root in the new dirt, further binding it together and weaving it into a thick mat of just...ground. In only six years, part of our yard had been buried by nature up to a good two, two 1/2 inches. Replace six years with six thousand years, and what trace of my childhood home would be left? My home town? It just made me realize how quickly nature can swallow and reclaim territory, even while people are actively living there...

[@slimdickens1799]

i absolutely love how your videos connect history and video games. a perfect overlap i never thought i'd find at this quality! keep up the good work.

[@GodelsLaw]

Great video as always. Another example of anthropological curiosity slipping all the way to colonialist impulses is the book “King Solomon’s Mines”. In the story, a group of adventurers led by a ivory hunter travel to an uncharted valley to find a lost tribe living atop the ancient ruins of a secret treasure. It is hard to read now, due to its openly racialized imperialist perspective, but was (and still is) massively influential to the whole adventure genre. Compare with Indiana Jones, or Atlantis the Lost Empire, and you can see how this impulse to find buried secret civilizations has found it’s way into more contemporary popular media.

[@kalaiten]

I was just thinking about how I was looking forward to one of your videos!

[@brainydiode]

In the anime/manga One Piece, there's an island called Water 7, based on Venice, Italy, that experiences an annual tsunami called Aqua Laguna and is, as a result, sinking into the ocean. As the characters travel around the island they see that the buildings in the current version of the city are literally built on the rooves of the old buildings, which you can just see peeking out over the surface of the city's waterways. I believe that at one point in the manga there's a panel that shows you a view from under the water where you can see that the current city is at least the third or fourth. It's always been a really cool piece of worldbuilding to me.

[@lordofthevallies2280]

This channel and these videos are some of the most intriguing, well-written video essays I've seen on youtube. It's amazing how captivating these videos are.

[@illuminutty9723]

I've always been fascinated by this concept, especially in games. One I really enjoyed was Dragon Ages' Deep Roads, which not only feels subterranean, but fantastical too

[@marchdarkenotp3346]

DROP EVERYTHING, JACOB GELLER JUST UPLOADED A NEW VIDEO

[@sabresister]

This is my absolute favorite video you’ve done so far (maybe only a little bit because I studied and worked in the field of archaeology for so long). Just, wow. You did an incredible job with this one. I’m gonna share this with my archaeology buddies ❤️

[@7RStudios]

There's something poetic about closing this video out with Sticker bush Symphony, given how it had recently become the Internet checkpoint and even more recently that video being taken down and having all those comments and that history lost.

[@aquitainedugascon4726]

6 layers? "Hah!" Says Uruk with its 18 layers, deep enough to hide a multi story building in the excavation pit. What you said at the end is very important though - looking beyond the surface. And not just of ancient cities (because under most Greek and Roman cities lies one or more ancient places), but also modern ideas, concepts, and the words coming out of a politicians mouth.(Or really anyone trying to influence you to do or think something.)

[@Paroex]

I think the difference here, and the reason why Jacob chose Kaifeng, is that unlike Uruk it's still inhabited, with "modern" humans still living and walking on top of these previous buried layers. There are abandoned city ruins with more layers than even Uruk, but what makes places like Kaifeng extra fascinating is that life still goes on at the surface.

[@phz7107]

I live in Seattle for now and it's been maybe 3 years of living here and I'm still absolutely fascinated by the underground. It's so cool and interesting and creepy! I've been looking for a way into the underground for 2 years now. I know you an take a tour but I want to see the forgotten areas, the places people haven't gone in years or hasn't even seen light in years. I want to find all that's been hidden and lost... Honestly just to look at it. Im not sure what it is but there's a certain feeling of accomplishment and interest when exploring abandoned ruins. You're in a place that was once bustling, busy and alive but now you're there and it's overgrown and dark and.... It feels good in a strange way

[@pedrocerda6574]

Bro real I moved up here about 4 years ago n I was so hype 2 explore the underground until I actually went on the tour and found it was just like, four city blocks worth of places and mostly it’s just a tourist trap. Sadly I don’t think there’s much of anything that isn’t already hit by the tour, seattle was even smaller back then :( shit got me feeling hella sad when I realized that

[@ethel7255]

Around halfway through this video, I thought, "oh, is he gonna bring up Mary King's Close again?" And when the sign showed up I almost said YEAH out loud

[@TheAnimefreak2001]

Another one for the favourites playlist. I love how you always bring these videos down a path to so many fascinating topics!

[@toojlewis8982]

Damn this is actually insane Imagine just standing on the ground and there being an entire city underneath you

[@VMKjelly]

Thank you for touching on the topic of Treaty Rights and Indigenous Nations Sovereignty. I’ve been on the ground for these and sometimes I wonder if anyone outside our advocacy even knows.

[@snowen2762]

Was just waiting for a new video thank you so much for making these.

[@the-uh2ur]

Love the use of Hyper Light Drifter music, a great (and fitting) choice. Wonderful writing as always!

[@approximateCognition]

This reminds me of the parasite-capital of Tolmekia in Nausicäa and the Valley of the Wind.

[@sonicthehedgegod]

yooooo, the whole time you were talking about the forgotten city i was like “wait, isn’t this a skyrim mod???” and looked it up, and yeah! i totally remember playing through the skyrim mod version years ago, nice! cool to see it was made into a full game, it was easily the most interesting narrative i’d ever seen in a skyrim mod (never finished enderal so i can’t say) EDIT: ah. i see. lmao

[@ericeasterday863]

Always nice to wake up and see new video from this channel! I love listening to your videos while I workout. It's honestly helps alot! Your work is greatly appreciated.

[@Daryl42]

That transition around 11:55 where it goes from the map to a stylized city to actual modern footage was amazing.

[@Captain1nsaneo]

I imagine that dams affect Native American land more often because they don't actually own the land as it's controlled by the federal bureau of Indian affairs.

[@samanthak9346]

that's on purpose, to make it easier to do things like build dams in their territory.

[@Captain1nsaneo]

@@samanthak9346 Pretty sure the bureau pre-dates the dam building spree in the US. There was a period where dams were the currency of political favors. That ended just after they ran out of good places to put dams, I'm sure you can guess why.

[@meatworld4776]

@@Captain1nsaneo not specifically about dams, but having land the government is interested in populated nearly exclusively by people the colonial government has labeled as unimportant at best and subhuman at worst was always the point

[@Captain1nsaneo]

@@meatworld4776 I know, but I also know from experience that things are never that cut and dry and especially not in politics.

[@alicethewalice9482]

There was a beautiful manga about a girl who begins having dreams of her grandmother’s past and her son who drowned, just before their small village is about to be flooded by a new dam development in the present. I was going to recommend it but I unfortunately cannot remember the name of it :( If anyone has any idea of what I was talking about I’d be very grateful, it was such a lovely little story.

[@elenafriese891]

Well, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm gonna leave a comment for when someone else eventually thinks of the title.

[@elenafriese891]

@@maxthibodeau3627 ah yes, company, how absolutely grand! * Sips tea and then pours a cup for you * I look quite look forward to this wait now.

[@Armaan8014]

That kind of reminds me of the anime movie Your Name by Makoto Shinkai (though that's a bit different I think)

[@alicethewalice9482]

okay a month later i suddenly remembered the name! its Suiiki by Yuki Urushibara! It's only 2 volumes and i definitely recommend it if you enjoyed the themes of this video :)

[@alessandropolo7257]

2:30 it's quite common for very old cities and towns to have multiple layers of previous iterations on top of each other. It's easier to just bury everything after a disaster than moving all the rubble. And in like 3000 years of history you can have many many layers...

[@krell.1415]

Every Jacob Geller video gives me chills at some point. This was no exception. When he began discussing the Elder Scrolls mod origins of this game, it all felt so grand.

[@kingdomarc9]

If it possible you forgot to include Stickerbush Symphony to the list of music? I don't see it.

[@JacobGeller]

oop yes, thank you

[@jaydonthewarrior636]

This is making me think of Enderal. Another Skyrim mod, available to download on steam pretty easily, It doesn't bring it to mind just because it's a Skyrim mod, but you would need to play it yourself to know why that is. It's a game I think you would enjoy, quite a lot.

[@Twilightingale21]

I've recently remembered Enderal is a thing and have been playing the hell out of it again. It's a fantastic game, and you're right about the connections between it and this video's theme!

[@simonchasnovsky1835]

Bruh you're actually putting out too much content I can only handle one gaming-related existencial crisis per semester