Where was the Spear discovered, exactly?

[Reichu]

I decided to try my hand at revising this messy passage from our wiki (which I probably wrote at some point), specifically this line:

In the year 2000, the Katsuragi Expedition unearthed Adam and the Spear in the Antarctic. The Spear was removed, briefly relocated to the Dead Sea region, and then shipped back to the South Pole in preparation for the Contact Experiment.

...which is obviously fanwank and not substantiated anywhere. Trying to replace it made me quickly realize that I have no idea how to actually address the problem of where the Spear was found.

The fundamental problem is that the data contradicts itself.

In episode 21', the Spear is first mentioned here:

OLD MAN C:
What about the Lance of Longinus?

MAN A:
It's been sitting there since it was shipped here last week
from the Dead Sea.

OLD MAN B:
It will be treated before it's sent underground, won't it?
Are we okay on that?

This implies that the Spear was found near Qumran or something, and shipped to Antarctica for use in the contact experiment.

But two episodes later...



...they put a picture on screen the moment Ritsuko talks about humanity finding God: Adam in the process of being excavated, the Spear of Longinus visibly emerging from the giant's back. There's even a closeup of the tines, just as extra insurance that the detail registers. (Clean version of the pic here. Cleaned-up version of whole Reiquarium scene here -- need to contact the creator and get blessings to update Wiki with these versions...)

Now, keep in mind that both of these details -- the line about the Spear arriving from the Dead Sea, and the Adam image overlaying the Rei clones -- were both deliberate additions made when these episodes were revised for video format. The seeming conflict becomes all the more mysterious as a result. Just what exactly are we supposed to make of this?

Of course, with the remastered (Renewal) version of 23', the image overlays were mysteriously taken from us. This could be an argument for the de-canonization of the Adam picture, I suppose. Except...

• The remastered DVD set was promoted in part with a music video by Masayuki that included clean versions of the most prominent Reiquarium images. (This music video was also badly upscaled and included as an extra with the BD box set.)
• Two other critical images -- Eva-01 attached to Lilith and Yui before her sync test -- continue to remain 100% relevant. The Renewal version actually made the Yui image MORE relevant by adding background dialogue that drops the name of the proto-plugsuit Yui is wearing ("divesuit").
• The video game Neon Genesis Evangelion 2, developed as part of the whole Renewal project, promised to reveal many of the series' mysteries (apparently having derived the authority to do so by virtue of interrogating Anno and other members of the staff). It includes the tidbit that Adam was discovered with its Spear, and that Lilith had one of her own that went MIA during First Impact.

Evangelion Chronicle acknowledges pretty much nothing that was revealed in NGE2, nor does it acknowledge the existence of those tank images. Regarding the Spear's origin, it says:

The Spear of Longinus is the massive artifact that Gendoh and Fuyutsuki retrieved from Antarctica. It was originally discovered in the Dead Sea and was brought to Antarctica in August 2000, prior to the Second Impact, because the Katsuragi Expedition had need of it.

So! This whole thing is such a giant mess I'm honestly not sure what to put in the Wiki. Just saying that the Spear was found with Adam is the easiest route, but also one that's unable to address the whole Dead Sea mess without frothing speculation on the spot. I'm sure there must be some way to concisely phrase everything; I just haven't thought of it yet. Wiki aside, the intended takeaway here is a bit baffling. If the Spear was found in the Dead Sea, that means both an intentionally drawn, inserted, and emphasized image and the CI are wrong. If it wasn't, that means that a Spear found in Antarctica was inexplicably sent to the Dead Sea and then, mere months later at the most, sent right back to Antarctica.

The only way I can personally reconcile this nonsense is if a Spear was found in BOTH places, i.e., the Classified Information was being a coy bastard when it claimed the whereabouts of Lilith's Spear weren't known. So, the Spear wasn't destroyed, it was just separated from Lilith and ejected from the Black Moon (...somehow) and landed in what is the present-day Dead Sea region. The only problem I can find with this is that the dialogue in episode 21' just says "Spear of Longinus", not "the OTHER Spear" or whatever. Of course the people who are talking wouldn't realistically need to say that, since they already understand the context, but the truth is that they're speaking exposition-ese, so the lack of qualification about "which Spear" would probably be considered as a failure of exposition and possibly indicate that no such detail actually exists to be exposed in the first place. ...leaving us right back where we started. Anyway, going with the "two Spears" fanwank, the Spear that "sinks" into Adam would get destroyed along with her, leaving us with only one Spear afterward. (Why they took fifteen bloody years to retrieve it when Seele more or less immediately retrieved things as miniscule as zygotes and souls from the area, I'll never know.)

So, what does everybody think?

[NemZ]

I still think the spear we know is actually two parts intertwined, as is befitting a security device designed to stop two seeds being on the same planet. That's admittedly just fanwanking though.

...wait, so there are clear versions of those images we were trying to force (with little success) into making some sense with photoshop filters a few years ago? Are they uploaded anywhere?

[Reichu]

I mentioned the clean versions in my post; they're from the Masayuki "FULL OP" music video. A fan also cleaned up the original scene about as well as anyone is likely to, here.

How does your fanwank help reconcile the Dead Sea vs. Antarctica problem, which is what I created this thread specifically to address? (Obviously, if you're going to default to not wanting to deal with content from the DC episodes or NGE2 or whatever, you need not respond further.)

[NemZ]

My point was that my fanwanking fits with your concept of there being two spears all along. I agree with half your argument, just not the part about losing the other spear when it merged with Adam (which, if that were the case, why would they have gone to Antarctica to get it back rather than just getting the other one?).

[BlueBasilisk]

If the Spear was found in the Dead Sea, how did it get there? An early version of the story had Adam being found in the Dead Sea iirc, but in the actual show is there anything linked to the Dead Sea besides the scrolls? And if Adam wasn't impaled on the Spear, why was it just laying around dormant instead of producing Angels like it's supposed to?

The only explanation I can think of is that it was found with Adam, relocated to a research facility in the Dead Sea area so Seele could study it and/or collect samples that would be safe from Second Impact, and then they shipped back for the contact experiment. Seele's able to produce the black replica Spears for the Eva series, but wasn't the authentic one in Gendo's possession from the time it was recovered until Rei threw it away? Then again, Gendo snuck off with all of the Katsuragi team's data and findings before 2I, so why bother shipping it off site at all?

It almost makes me wonder if there's something else FAR-related in the Dead Sea that's never been revealed.

[Reichu]

NemZ: I'm not quite sure I follow. Using the explanation that one Spear was found in Antarctica and another was sent there from the Middle East, there would be no logical place to go to recover any surviving specimens BUT Antarctica. Unless 2I had jettisoned the object from the area, which is not what happened.

BlueBasilisk: I addressed how the Spear would have gotten there (see paragraph starting with "The only way I can personally reconcile this nonsense"). When I mention the CI, I'm specifically referencing this entry.

The notion of the Spear being shipped away and then shipped back seems to have been my tacit assumption when I (just gonna assume it was me) wrote the quoted bit from the wiki, but it always felt a bit convoluted and inefficient. It was an explanation, sure, but not an especially satisfying one. On top of that, if Seele were going to study the Spear off-site anywhere, WHY the Dead Sea region? It's in the West Bank, for goodness sake! There have to be at least 5,000 better places to set up shop, any number of which would have required transporting a huge, suspicious object far less of a distance from the bottom of the world.

[NemZ]

Oh, the extended OP. Not much more clarity there really, so the mystery remains. The other guy did pretty well, but damn that wavy effect is distracting.

As for the spears, I thought it worked but if they found them already combined and stuck in Adam then the idea of finding half later doesn't actually make sense I guess. Bugger. Honestly it doesn't make a lot of sense for a second spear to be sent in if they already had one either.

[cyharding]

I haven't watched the series in a few years (I mean to correct that), but I thought in the episode where the spear is being hauled on the deck of an aircraft carrier, Fuyutsuki remarked to Gendo as they were looking out a window that a post 2I Antarctica is a real Dead Sea. If that's the case, perhaps it's a nickname for the entire area.

[Reichu]

NemZ: What mystery remains due to the full OP's lack of clarity?

We're lacking much in the way of specifics regarding the KatsExp's weird experiment, so I don't see any reason offhand to dismiss a possible need for both Spears. For me, anyway, filling in that detail is a lot easier than trying to cope with (A) the issue of a single Spear being found in two places at the same time (i.e., the information conflict), or with (B) all the problems that come with suggesting that this huge object was sent away from a difficult-to-access part of the world, halfway across the planet, to a politically volatile part of the world, and then mere months later was sent right back to that difficult-to-access part of the world.

cyharding: Fuyutsuki says that because Second Impact made the entire antarctic region inhospitable to life, along with destroying the continent (ergo it's all ocean now). There's no reason to think the people on Katsuragi's team would be talking about anything other than the Dead Sea in the Middle East, since Antarctica is still perfectly intact at that time.

[NemZ]

The mystery of just what the hell some of those pics are trying to show, of course. A number of them are still without explanation last I checked.

Well, it's fanwanking either way to make the spear(s) make sense.

[Javik]

If the Spear was found in the Dead Sea, how did it get there?

But the dead sea scrolls weren't originally in the dead sea either. They were from the black moon, at least the manual described in the CI must have been. Part of the DSSs seems to have been normal scriptures written by the people there like in actual history. The point is, a manual from the black moon somehow traveled from Japan to the middle east, it's not that weird that the spear would have as well.

[BlueBasilisk]

The scrolls seem to be normal-sized books/scrolls that can be easily manipulated by humans so it's not impossible for humans to have moved them there over time. The Spear is about as long as an aircraft carrier (~80-100 meters if the ship carrying it really is the USS Farragut) and probably weighs hundreds or thousands of tons. Ancient humans would have had a really hard time moving it if they could have done so at all. The Spear could have flown there itself, but why leave its post and go traipsing off to the middle of nowhere?

[Reichu]

Javik's probably referring to a revision to the CI translation that I'm working on, where at second glance it seems to be saying that the term SDSS refers to two different things: there's the original "manual", and then there's the religious scripture inspired by it. However, I need some clarification before I finalize anything, so don't take any of this as gospel quite yet.

BlueBasilisk, since as mentioned the CI already suggests Lilith was separated from her Spear, why couldn't the thing have just landed in what tectonically became the Middle East?

[Javik]

Javik's probably referring to a revision to the CI translation that I'm working on, where at second glance it seems to be saying that the term SDSS refers to two different things: there's the original "manual", and then there's the religious scripture inspired by it. However, I need some clarification before I finalize anything, so don't take any of this as gospel quite yet.

BlueBasilisk, since as mentioned the CI already suggests Lilith was separated from her Spear, why couldn't the thing have just landed in what tectonically became the Middle East?

But then it's true that we go back to the problem of coincidence. How would both the SDSSs and the Lance of Longinus land in the same place. If we assume they somehow both fell out from the Black Moon because of an impact with the earth it would be weird for two seperate objects to fly the same direction.

If we assume that only the Lance fell out it would be weird that somehow the Manuals landed in that place as well.

[cyharding]

Fuyutsuki says that because Second Impact made the entire antarctic region inhospitable to life, along with destroying the continent (ergo it's all ocean now). There's no reason to think the people on Katsuragi's team would be talking about anything other than the Dead Sea in the Middle East, since Antarctica is still perfectly intact at that time.

My mistake. I looked it up and it turns out I mixed up that scene from the show and the manga version, where Fuyutsuki does make that comparison. Again, I haven't watched the TV show or read the manga from begining to end in a good long while.

[BlueBasilisk]

But then it's true that we go back to the problem of coincidence. How would both the SDSSs and the Lance of Longinus land in the same place. If we assume they somehow both fell out from the Black Moon because of an impact with the earth it would be weird for two seperate objects to fly the same direction.

If we assume that only the Lance fell out it would be weird that somehow the Manuals landed in that place as well.

Maybe they didn't. If we assume the Spear fell out and remained in the future Dead Sea region until Seele claimed it, it's entirely possible that the Scrolls landed elsewhere, were found by ancient people, and made their way to the Dead Sea as well. Could be coincidence, or maybe someone had found the Spear and put the scrolls there on purpose so they'd be close together.

What about this chain of events? Seele finds the Spear in the Dead Sea. The Katsuragi team then finds Adam buried in the ice sans Spear. While the excavation is going on, the Spear is shipped down to Antarctica and stabbed into Adam's back to keep it docile while they finish digging it out.

Does the DC video of the scientists discussing the Spear have a time stamp on it? I can't remember if it does or when it happened relative to 2I.

[Reichu]

The Spear was shipped to the Antarctic Base around a month before 2I happened. At that point, Adam was already excavated, since we have stuff like this in the dialogue:

MAN A:
You mean the super solenoid theory that Dr. Katsuragi proposed?

OLD MAN B:
That theory is just too radical!

OLD MAN C:
It's nothing more than a hypothesis at this point.

MAN A:
But only the S2 theory can explain that giant's power.

(......)

OLD MAN C:
Today's experiment is on the ego threshold signal of that field, was it?

Looking at the flashback video footage from an "economy of exposition" perspective, the Dead Sea bit is rather baffling to me. As far as I can see, its only possible reason for being there is to link the Spear with the Scrolls in some way. Since we know for a fact the Spear and Scrolls have a common origin, this could have been the intent, to imply said common origin within the show. But this just takes us back to the original problem: why include that line about the Spear being sent from the area, and then insert the image of Adam discovered with the Spear two episodes later? If the image by chance happened to be a mistake, then why reinforce it with the information given to Alfa Systems for NGE2? But how could it be a mistake, since Lilith taking over Earth doesn't make any sense unless Adam was incapacitated in some way!

[BlueBasilisk]

Well I'm completely stumped. Unless Adam was just laying around napping or Lilith showed up immediately after, I can't imagine why Adam hadn't already made some Angels by the time she got here.

Maybe the Saurians fought their own war against the first generation of Angels and it ended with them and Adam buried under the ice. Makes as much sense as anything else in this.

[Reichu]

In the seeming absence of a viable alternative, I just keep circling back to my original proposal: that is, Lilith's Spear is what was found in the Dead Sea region, having gotten there in the first place as a result of First Impact shenanigans; Adam's Spear was found in Antarctica impaling its owner. This DOES conflict with the CI's claim that Lilith's Spear was never found, but IMO that's a fairly minor conflict compared to the mess on our hands if we don't have two Spears to work with... Are there any glaring problems with the idea that haven't already been identified and addressed?

Still not sure how to elegantly address this in the wiki, tho. Ugh.

[Javik]

In the seeming absence of a viable alternative, I just keep circling back to my original proposal: that is, Lilith's Spear is what was found in the Dead Sea region, having gotten there in the first place as a result of First Impact shenanigans; Adam's Spear was found in Antarctica impaling its owner. This DOES conflict with the CI's claim that Lilith's Spear was never found, but IMO that's a fairly minor conflict compared to the mess on our hands if we don't have two Spears to work with... Are there any glaring problems with the idea that haven't already been identified and addressed?

Still not sure how to elegantly address this in the wiki, tho. Ugh.

I see two problems with theory. First is the CI's claim, I mean Anno was supposed to work with the people making the game. If he mentioned the fact that the Spear of Longinus was lost or destroyed and didn't mention it being found in the Dead Sea region then I think we should take that. He knew what he was talking about. Secondly that would mean we had SDSSs and the Lance, it's just too much ofa coincidence for them to land in one place or for ancient people to gather them in one place.

This would just leave us with the original version. The Lance was found impaled in Adam and then it was moved to the Dead Sea region and then moved back for the experiment. Sure, it's a bit weird. But then again we don't know that much about what was happening back then in general. Maybe they were checking how the Spear reacts to some artifacts on spot, maybe SEELE had one of their best facilities there. Maybe they just used it for some special exhibition, event or ritual. Who knows? It's weird, but at least it doesn't contradict the CI and it doesn't rely on a weird circumstance. It's just problematic because we don't know, but that's it.