Game Theory: Minecraft's BURIED History (1.20 Update)

the sands of time Slowly cover up what remains of the birthplace of civilization a people once driven by creation Now left in ruin erosion and hubris casting a shadow over what once was the crumbling buildings and Scattered fragments of society leaving a puzzle to the Past hoping that someday someone will pick up those pieces of this Fallen land to reassemble the story of their downfall well that day is today and that's someone is me oh internet welcome to Game Theory the show that's always happ

y to brush up on some Minecraft you know I get super excited every time Mojang drops us a new update new updates mean new Mobs new locations New Mechanics for us to mine through for story and that was doubly so for 1.20 because they were finally adding something that had been teased all the way back in 2020 archeology archeology is literally uncovering history it is putting together the lore of real life so I waited for three years in anticipation and finally finally when the trails and tales up

date came out we got a camel there was also a sniffer a new Cherry Grove biome and then a handful of Armor Designs and broken pots not exactly the most groundbreaking stuff at least at first glance sure there was no big exciting entity like the warden or a mysterious structure like an ancient city but as with most archeology while the surface might seem largely pointless and empty if you dig a bit deeper you start to uncover the real story behind everything in fact I believe that this update giv

es us the most comprehensive look into the Society of ancient builders that we have been theorizing about for years their daily lives their tribal disputes and ultimately where it all went wrong with the origins of the Wither grab your archaeological brush as their loyal theorists it's time we dust off the Lost pieces of Minecraft's forgotten civilization and I do mean that literally because this whole thing starts with one of the seemingly smallest new additions to the game that's ever happened

the pieces of pottery otherwise known as Pottery shirts these shirts are scattered throughout the Minecraft world at five archaeological sites the desert temples desert Wells both the warm and cold ocean ruins and the newly added Trail ruins there are 20 Unique Designs for these shirts and when combined together you can actually create a pot that can hold various items and no you haven't been mishearing me this entire time I am indeed saying shirts and not shards it turns out that assured is ac

tually the technical term for broken pottery found at an archaeological site it is so weirdly specific but hey good on you Mojang for being historically accurate it tells us that they had big plans for these small pieces of pottery let me tell you looking at these shirts they reveal a lot you see Pottery plays a huge role in helping historians learn about the lives and beliefs of ancient civilizations food Fabrics people Yep they're all going to Decay over time and fairly quickly I might add but

Pottery can last a lot longer and so it's often one of the only remaining evidence points that historians can use to think about how these ancient cultures behaved and operated sure great megalithic structures like the pyramids can tell us a lot about the Kings and the religious Customs but Pottery was an integral part in the daily lives of everyone and while today we might think of ceramic pots as just vessels for carrying stuff around like liquids or plants ancient societies gave these much m

ore important and prominent roles in their lives the ancient Greeks used to decorate their vases with elaborate ornamentation allowing them to depict different aspects of the day-to-day life from work to parties to sports even showing their rituals for religious events like funerals one of the most famous examples of this is the Eritrea painter name base which depicts images of a bride in wedding scenes along with characters from mythology that represent marital bliss from this one pot alone arc

haeologists were able to learn so much about ancient Greek marital traditions in short fragments of pottery are often the best and only view that we get into the day-to-day lives of long gone ancient forgotten peoples and given that these 20 new Minecraft shirts are all decked out with various symbolic imagery I think Mojang is trying to do exactly that the other important thing to note about these shirts is that the 20 specific shirt designs can all be found in the same place different sets are

designated to different biomes and different ruins which means that while we might have been right about an ancient Builder race they weren't a single monolithic people like we've been assuming instead what we're seeing drawn on these shirts isn't just telling us about the daily lives of the ancient Builders but of their specific societies and their Clans each location had its own set of values its own culture its own daily tasks and when you stop and think about it that actually makes a lot mo

re sense in the real world all of humanity started off with one common ancestor that left the African continent sometime between 60 and 90 000 years ago but eventually Humanity spread and they spread all across the globe which meant that they had to adapt to new environments and as a result they built amazing wonders of the world that were specific to the region where they lived which meant that things like religion defense entertainment they all took different forms depending on where they were

in the world and we see this influence in the differences of some of the great structures that we find across the Minecraft world the Ocean Monuments for instance were designed to look like ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats buildings meant to connect the Heavens to the Earth which is noticeably different from the jungle temples which are more similar to the ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples found in the jungle throughout Cambodia like the bang Malaya and top Rome it therefore makes a lot more sen

se to say that these were all created by different groups of people spread out over vast distances for their own needs rather than created by one all-powerful super civilization even the new edition of armor trim seems to point in this direction these items allow players to add decorative enhancements to their armor which alone doesn't seem like all that much but when you once again consider that they're spread all across the Minecraft world including some in the Nether and some in the end you s

tart to reflect what we're seeing in the real world different tribes with armor made of similar materials but all with different designs that reflect their local culture now that we know that there were indeed different tribes spread out across the Minecraft world what were the differences between them and what can they tell us about the ancient Minecraft culture well let's start off with what I believe to be the oldest tribe ironically from the newest of the archaeological sites the trail ruins

found in forest biomes like the jungle and Taiga these things are almost completely buried with only the tallest buildings peeking out of the surface to find and that already is Mojang telling us something it's telling us that these buildings are old like really really old it takes a long time for sediment to completely bury something like an entire Village for a real world example just look at the moai commonly known as the Easter Island heads they were created between the 15th and 16th centur

ies and for a long time people thought that's all they were giant big brained heads sticking out of the ground but they're not there are actually bodies under each of those heads but over the centuries sediment built up around the abandoned statues so only the heads were visible above the surface just like we're seeing with the trail ruins but it goes beyond just being buried underground the shirts and armor trims found specifically in the trail ruins show us a lifestyle that in the real world w

e would consider to be part of the birth of civilization the whole shirt for instance shows us a wolf an animal that was once considered to be a threat to early humans later domesticated during the late Mesolithic period used to help out with everything from hunting and protection while we were still in the hunter-gatherer phase the chief sure depicts a bundle of wheat wheat is the most common crop in Minecraft but it's also one of the first plants that we as humans ever domesticated again durin

g that same Mesolithic period but the thing that really proves that this is coming from the oldest Group by far is some that we've seen not only in the real world but also in the lore of Minecraft itself in the trail ruins you can find yourself a variety of different armor trims but one of them in particular caught my eye the host armor trim now the hosts were the Godlike beings found in Minecraft Legends the characters who ultimately summoned our character in to help save the day at the end of

the game when peace has been store to the Overworld the hosts they just dip they piece out they're like we're good here so we theorize that the ancient civilizations did all they could to bring them back this host armor trim being here seems to suggest that we were on the right track and history also backs this up religious practices and rituals are found in our own history dating as far back as the middle Paleolithic Era which Falls between 45 and 200 000 years ago this was indeed the first tri

be after the events of Minecraft Legends a tribe of people that were trying to call upon the old gods for help a tribe of people who while they were waiting decided to set up some basic farming hide in dense wooded areas and domesticate animals giving rise to the first ever civilization like we've talked about in a previous episode But as time goes on and the hosts of old don't immediately return the ancient Builders continue to develop they continue to spread out to other biomes in order to gat

her resources in one of my earliest Minecraft theories we talked a lot about the underwater temples another one of the megastructures but this one found under the sea we hypothesize that the people who created these submerged pyramid mids were either fishermen or perhaps Pirates by trade now thanks to the shirts we know that both of these ideas were right just a little bit more nuanced than we expected one of these shirts is the angler shirt angler as in a person who catches fish a fisherman and

as this shirt is only found in the war motion ruins it likely means that just like the trail ruins relied on basic agriculture this group relied on fishing for survival in their trade but once you head on over to the cold ocean ruins you get yourself a very different civilization we find shared fragments like blade Explorer plenty sound a wee bit like Pirates don't you think in fact the shipwrecks which have been a part of the game since 1.13's aquatic update are chock full of plundered booties

so it seemed like the cold ocean ruined civilization were largely a society of pirates who use these ships to terrorize other civilizations stealing their resources and their Treasures in the process but then there's the final two archaeological sites located in the desert and this is where we see things taking a dark turn this is where we see the fall of these once great civilizations the desert temples have always been a place packed with mystery for us theorists but now we're getting some id

ea of what these people were doing when they weren't sourcing hundreds of TNT blocks for their death traps with shirts like the miner and prize it tells us that these were the people who built the mine shaft that you find throughout the Overworld these were the ones that truly pioneered the idea of mining the Earth for resources especially in places like the Badlands or the Red Sand deserts then they'd bring all of these resources back to their base these giant temples and then they'd booby trap

them so no one would actually steal them sounds like most Minecraft players in a public server except I don't think that these Treasures were strictly from the mine shafts alone I suspect that the desert people were the first civilization to cross over into The Nether now that might seem like a stretch just from me talking about a bunch of pottery but hear me out the other desert archaeological site is the desert Wells and considering they share a biome it's not unreasonable to believe that the

se were the same group of people in this site we can actually find the Brewer shirt depicting a potion but remind me how do you make potions again you need cheese powder and the only way to get blaze powder is to grind down blaze rods from Blaze which are only found in you guessed it the nether there's also a shirt found in the desert temple known as skull depicting the head of a skeleton or you could suggest a wither skeleton it's small and it's pixelated so it's hard to tell but we also know t

hat red Sandstone like you can find in the mine shafts that we just talked about can be chiseled and once you chisel it what image appears on the Block the Wither itself which ties in nicely to the final shirt from the desert well the arms up shirt it's a very vague image just a humanoid figure with its arms up is it celebrating is it stretching is it waiting for some high fives or is it a stance of worship many religions have you raising your arms up to worship the god of that faith and I suspe

ct that's exactly what we're seeing here but I also don't think they're worshiping the hosts like the other factions of ancient Builders instead they're worshiping the Wither a man-made creation these people were people of science they built TNT out of the remains of creepers they built themselves portals to another dimension all to find the perfect fuel to build their super overpowered potions they were tired of waiting for the hosts to save them tired of watching The Creepers zombies and skele

tons turned from Ally to enemy after the events of Minecraft Legends and so they turned to science they continued to explore the Nether and saw the life-giving properties of Soul Sand vegetation giving life with no water or sunlight those they lost to piglands raised to life again in the form of wither skeletons this was exactly what they needed they brought back the soul-powered sand and experimented designing the ultimate creature to be their new God one that could protect them like the hosts

couldn't or wouldn't but just like everything else they knew it too would turn on them the damage caused by the withers felt across the land countless lives lost to its unending rage but few people are able to survive flee to the only place they believe the Wither won't find them underground those that fled to the deep dark corners of the Minecraft Earth meanwhile create the ancient cities a grand complex that would serve as their new home at least for a little while they would try to make a dif

ferent kind of portal to take them to a new world they would experiment again with Soul Sand combining it with the science of redstone but they did all of this with heavy hearts knowing that they had doomed their once great world and when the time came to open the portal it didn't offer them a new chance only more pain out of the portal came the warden a Creature built of souls summoned by their regret and their loss which is why is Pottery shirt the last in the game is known as the mourner a lo

st Relic representing the fall of a once great people whose Story Only remains in broken pieces of pots all but lost to the literal sands of time but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching if you're enjoying this breakdown of Minecraft's forgotten history why not check out our video on Minecraft's other game Minecraft legends that one's over on the left or if you'd like to check out another game where you wouldn't expect there to be lore check out our video on Just Dance that

one's to the right yep that one's got some deep cut lore too as always my friends don't forget to subscribe and I will see you all next week