When we first see Ground Zero at Antarctica for ourselves in 3.0+1.0, we can see 5 black crosses instead of the expected four. Additionally, NERV HQ's levitation system uses the same "fishing wire" style quantum cable thingies that glow orange but shimmer in the light, that's also how it's able to move the Black Moon. AND, when Unit 13 is "gestating" inside NERV HQ in the third movie, it's inside the same giant oval-shaped mechanical pod Unit 01 can briefly be seen inside of onboard AAA WUNDER.
So here's what I think happened. The four Adams we know of landed at the Earth's South Pole in their ships. Then Lilith landed in her ship [the Black Moon] in Japan and began creating her own life on the planet that was rightfully Adam-owned [Original Sin]. THEN, a fifth Adam became aware of this and took his own ship to either destroy or contain Lilith inside of her ship, landing on top of hers. By this point it was too late though, and Lilith's Seeds of Knowledge had already become the dominant source of life on Earth, while the previous four Adams had either given up or become dormant NGE style.
The ships we see in 3.0 and 3+1 are heavily modified versions of the original ships, now redesigned to be piloted by a bunch of Lilin as opposed to just one Lilith or one Adam each. Originally, it seems ALL the ships were huge rocky shapes like the Black Moon's chalice shape and NERV HQ's inverted pyramid shape.
How Unit 01 relates to this, seeing as how it counters Unit 13 and looks incredibly similar, is that [and bear in mind we're in heavy speculation territory rn] Unit 01 is a clone of Unit 13, taken from a sample obtained while Unit 13 was still gestating in his pod [which had been repurposed to modify him from an Adam into an Evangelion.] This is why Unit 01 has mostly humanoid features while 13 has the four arms and the four eyes and the two Cores [I think he has two Cores], because Unit 01 is taken from the stem cells of an under-construction EVA.

AdamMalkovitch wrote:When we first see Ground Zero at Antarctica for ourselves in 3.0+1.0, we can see 5 black crosses instead of the expected four.

We see five black crosses instead of the expected four, everywhere besides Fuyutsuki's tactical overlay within Nerv HQ:

nerv bae wrote:

(Quote is from the 2021 fifth cross topic.) I do not recall ever reading a plausible explanation for why the fifth cross is omitted from the overlay. However, if the fifth cross "belongs to" Nerv HQ in some fashion, it would make sense that an overlay in Nerv HQ would omit "its own" cross.

Oh weird, maybe since the 5th cross was left behind by a "special" Adam [Unit 13 is weird and his ship was late to the party] it isn't being picked up. There's a topic on here [that I can't find now and the search feature is fucked so I can't use that] I saw recently about the Adams BEING the ships, so maybe the idea of the cross "belonging" actually applies to NERV HQ/5th Adam, and that's why it doesn't appear.

I think differently. In this post:
https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_An ... _the_Adams
4 Adams were identified in the most reasonable way is Eva Unit-01, Eva Mark.06, Eva 13 and The Key of Nebuchadnezzar. And in Evangelion 3.0, we can see that Eva Mark.09 grew a new head, which is black and has 12 eyes, to replace its old one, which was destroyed. New head of Mark.09 has a horn, which was appeared similarly on 3 Evas: Unit 01, Mark.06 and Eva 13. And in Evangelion 3.0+1.0 we can see when Mark.10 open its mask, the face was hidden is black with 12 eyes, similar to Mark.09. The two can shoot a cross beam of energy like Angels and Unit-01 in Evangelion 2.0, and doesn't have AT Field like Eva 13. So I think that Mark.09, Mark.09-A, Mark.10, Mark. 11, Mark.12 are, maybe, built from an Adams, because they have identical shape, except their colors, that is the fifth Adams.

Actually, it's the Ultraman Ace reference, and holds no meaning