I don't want to derail the whole thread, but you can apply some Dan Brown shenanigans to cover most of that as a partiacthy suppressing an earlier matriachy, the fact that nobody sees her hair as weird means it isn't that outstanding of a trait (somehow), she does travel at least a little back to collect souls prior to her ascension in EoE, and perhaps she didn't realize it would backfire due to not knowing what sort of time travel rules she was operating under.

NemZ wrote:Perhaps because the original source is no longer available?

Sure, but then for me it's kind of problematic to trust the scrolls in the first place. How would you know what is described in the scrolls was actually inspired by aliens and not just random mythological weirdness like you see in many hebrew scriptures. After all, they wouldn't have any technical terms and it would be all shrouded in a religious aura. Unless the manual was also there then there wouldn't be much proof.

The CI never alludes to the "proto-SDSS" aside from that one vague bit. By your own logic, Seele finding them would have been a big enough deal to warrant actual mention, and yet... nothing.

I know you dislike the idea of the Spears being the culprit here, but really think about it. The Spears HAVE to be programmed with the will of the FAR anyway in order to make autonomous decisions the way they do. Ergo, they are already encoded with data about the proper "function" of Seeds and data that dictates all of their own behavior and abilities. As "security devices", they look out for the long-term interests of their creators in their absense. I don't think it's such a stretch that they would accordingly be the means of transmitting such information to the Seed's descendents. The information is in the Spear anyway; having additional gizmos would be redundant.

And this can't be ruled out just because the CI doesn't mention it. There's a lot of stuff about the Spears it simply doesn't address.

Reichu wrote:The CI never alludes to the "proto-SDSS" aside from that one vague bit. By your own logic, Seele finding them would have been a big enough deal to warrant actual mention, and yet... nothing.

Well, if it was just a manual then there wouldn't be much need to mention it otherwise. They mentione there were manuals and that the dead sea scrolls were based on them. What mention would you need besides that? It's also possible that the original manual was lost. Now they could think of it they could just confirm that the DSSs were on to something because of finding the moons, Adam, Lilith then what happened during second impact etc. After all they mention all the time in the series that the DSSs predicted something. So they're still in the process of confirming every tidbit.

Reichu wrote:I know you dislike the idea of the Spears being the culprit here, but really think about it.

It's not that I don't like the idea per se, heck I like the idea in general and if not the CI I would probably say it's the most sensible one. But I don't see how we can be just picky about the CI. The CI mentions the spear being used at third impact is Adam's that's certain. We know Adam was found with the spears. The Classified Informations also mentions that the spear of Lilith was somehow seperated after the first impact (so we know it's not after the second) and that it was either lost or destroyed. Also if the spear could pass on information then SEELE would replace it as a source for that rather than using the DSSs which were filtered through the minds of ancient people.

With the theory that there was only one spear by the time of the 2I you avoid contradictions. Contradictions are worse than vagueness, by definition.

Reichu wrote:The CI never alludes to the "proto-SDSS" aside from that one vague bit.

Does this mean we can finally rule out the improbability of impossibly giant space women roaming the galaxy with itty bitty (proportionally speaking) pieces of paper?

Too bad I missed this discussion when it was taking place, but better late than never.

I read the full thread and regarding several points discussed here, I have also noted the issue of the Spear being found with Adam but then coming from the Dead Sea one month before the Second Impact for the "Contact Experiment". I also considered one of these two pieces of information being contradictory and also disregarded that because if the Spear was never found with Adam, it would contradict the lore we have about Adam needed to be disabled since Lilith had already spawned its offspring by accident without her spear to stop her.

Implying that there were two spears prior to the Second Impact also doesn't work because it would mess up with all the aforementioned mechanics of the failsafe feature of the Spears, and how Lilith ended up being the spawner of life by accident.

However, tough I disagree with this hypothesis, you guys shouldn't think that "it was weird for the spear to fly all the way to the dead sea with the explosion of the crash land" because we were talking about 4 billion years here, the continents drifts in hundreds of millions of years, don't forget about that. Although the theory of the Grand Impact implied Earth kinda returned into a semi-rigid hot magma state. Strictly speaking, tough, it would have been unlikely that any fragments of the crashed Black Moon be easily exposed on the surface for any old civilization to find it, and Lilith would likely have been sunk into the planet's mantle with that impact and destroyed. I don't even think Anno had put all that much thought in all these details.

I think the most logical conclusion, like some people already proposed here was that the Spear was Removed from Adam after they excavated him they discovered him, for SOME reason, and sent to Europe or Israel, for a reason.

We could suspect that removing the spear could present the danger of awakening Adam, but then again, Lilith doesn't awaken immediately when the spear is removed from her in episode 22. However, Lilith doesn't have an S2 engine, and it seems the S2 Engine is needed for a quick regeneration as we see what happen to Unit 01 at the end of Episode 19 when it acquires an S2 engine into herself. THIS HERE IS THE KEY INTO EXPLAINING WHY THEY REMOVED THE SPEAR!

For helping understanding why would they send the Spear away, we need to try and postulate the consequences of inserting and removing the spear. Many people have theories regarding the Spear function and its shape. I always noticed that for episode 22, we see the spear with the separated ends inserted into Lilith "Slowing its growth". While in the movie, the joined end is able to fuse the S2 Engine/Unit 01 and the pilot with each other. We see a pattern here? Separated: Depressive, Disable, Joined: Stimulant, Activation. I believe the double end has the ability to "separate" and thus disable the core and its ability to access energy from the body as well as the S2 engine. I believe the reason they removed the spear and sent it far away was not simply to study the spear itself, but actually to remove the S2 engine and send it away from Adam before awakening it, and maybe, the S2 Engine was fused with the spear.

It makes a lot of sense for me. I was always bugged as how would Adam be stopped after awakening without an Eva. The only explanation so far was that the spear acted on its own will and stopped Adam, but that was rather hard to believe since Adam had time to awaken, deploy his At field, cause huge explosions before stopping his awakening. I believe by removing the S2 engine from him, you removed the infinite source of energy and the possibility of Adam to create a near limitless Anti-At field and full planetary extinction, the anti-at field only used the organic and core energy reserves without the S2 Engine that Adam had in his body, and not an infinite energy. He them spawned all the Angel embryos after he exhausted all his energy. This is backed up by the line on episode 21: (All the AT FIELDS, plural, are being release), and as we know, the Angels took 15 years to maturate from an embryo state. Thus even tough they do have s2 engines, they are undeveloped during the Second Impact and can't be used as a source of energy. I also believe, during this "seeding" process, Adam finally also reverted himself into an embryo after the whole process containing its own soul onsite for further reemerging later, this embryo was recovered and spliced with a human soul, and then we had Kaworu. Although the CI states that Adam's soul was "salvaged later", this doesn't necessary mean that the soul was in free-float-energy state like the souls we see in EoE immediately after tangification, the Adam's SOUL could have been contained in a remainder of his core after the final explosion.

This resolves the problem of why Adam wasn't fully able to destroy the whole humanity without evoking the Spear self will to stop Adam, how Kaworu's soul (Adam) was recovered, how the Angels were born, how and why the S2 Engine was removed and everything else without recurring to the Self-will of the spear to stop adam and explaining why it was too late to do so, after all, Adam had already eradicated almost the entire south pole of life and spawned its offspring. Somehow the spear was inserted wrongly into Adam, into Activation mode, thus it could not stop the process anymore.

However, this brings one final problem: If they removed the S2 Engine from Adam, they had Lilith and the spear, then why awaken Adam in the first place? Would be impossible to create a clone of Lilith to destroy Adam with its S2 Engine already out without never needing to allow him to cause the Second Impact? That is the only more significant inconsistency I wasn't able to cover so far very well, the best I can think of, is that maybe after they removed the spear on the first time, the slow awakening of Adam was already inevitable, and they reinserted the spear hoping to stop his awakening and the spear did take part in the process after all, but the slow awakening of adam was already not completely able to be halted.

Well there you go, one of my most complex fanwanks so far. (Tough no one bothered to read and discuss my last revised post explaining how the cores and AT-Field expansion works and debunking the PWM hypothesis).

Removing the S2 engine and sending it away doesn't make any sense because Dr. Katsuragi, the pioneer of S2 theory, is in Antarctica. What's he doing there if not studying Adam's S2 engine? (Something Eva Chronicle discusses in greater detail.) Additionally, on the very same day that the Spear arrives at the base, we hear three members of the research team discuss the viability of the S2 theory. The only reason to have them talk about it is if, well, it's something that concerns the research team at the time.

The line about A.T. Fields being released regards Adam's AATF corroding the ability of life in the area to retain physical shape. It's intended to help tie 2I and 3I together. See also the shot in Death of Adam's wings scattering souls liberated by the AATF.

Dunno why you say "Europe or Israel", since the Dead Sea is explicitly mentioned.

Reichu wrote:Removing the S2 engine and sending it away doesn't make any sense because Dr. Katsuragi, the pioneer of S2 theory, is in Antarctica. What's he doing there if not studying Adam's S2 engine? (Something Eva Chronicle discusses in greater detail.)

I don't see that as a problem. The scientists were there to study Adam as whole. Dr. Katsuragi postulated the importance of the S2 Theory and the S2 Engine precisely as a fruit of these studies. So? Why doesn't make sense to send the S2 Engine away precisely to avoid a full fledge impact? He could continue studying other aspects of Adam, his core. OR he could have gone together with the S2 Engine and the spear back to Israel and latter return to Antartica and take part on further studies in the contact experiment. The contact experiment was the big deal everyone was waiting to happen. The S2 study was just one of the many other important side studies related to Adam.

Dunno why you say "Europe or Israel", since the Dead Sea is explicitly mentioned.

I can imagine that important facilities of Seele being on Israel, but since Adam's embryo came from Germany I imagine some studies could be done there. But yeah, I don't see the point of the Spear to be sent to Germany, I was mostly referring to Adam's embryo/S2 Engine.

Meant as edits to my previous post, but you had already replied...

I don't think a lack of S2 engine is necessary to explain Adam's failed Second Impact. I could make various arguments for this, but since you seem to consider the Classified Information reliable, it's simplest to point out that the CI states that Adam's S2 went "berserk" at 2I. It couldn't go berserk if it wasn't there inside Adam at the time.

"Adam finally also reverted himself into an embryo after the whole process containing its own soul onsite for further reemerging later, this embryo was recovered and spliced with a human soul, and then we had Kaworu." - Misato mentions that Adam was reverted into an egg (tamago) which, as we know, was eventually restored to embryo state. This entity is clearly not the same thing as Kaworu, evident by the fact that the Adam embryo and Kaworu coexist. Kaworu was the product of the donor's genes merging into Adam, the so-called contact experiment. The EoE theatrical program suggests that Kaworu was collected by Seele while still an egg, which works out. Kaworu would not have had much opportunity to gestate inside Adam after the donor genes "physically fused" with her, and if Seele could retrieve Adam's egg, they could certainly find Kaworu's as well.