that would be a bit weird since armors trims are sort of templates for the trims, not the "trim" themselves. if we had found piece of armor in bad condition that would make more sense, but we don't, so i would assume they either made them, sold them, or something of the sort. since we don't find any armor or piece of weaponry in the trail ruins, i'd also assume those were all trading villages like the ones we find in the game nowadays, like peaceful tribes that could have sold them to wandering travellers like us the players
I think that 1-block hole by the furnaces and the iron bars that you theorized could have melted at 3:06 was build like that to hold lava, like blacksmiths in villages.
Since it was at a higher level, it may have been accidentally dropped by someone exploring the ruins in the past, just passing through on the line of the old road system, or be a hoard deposition.
I think it was maybe a bell (Like the one in villages) and the bell was stolen but the little ball thing inside fell out. That ball thing being the nugget.
@@verticleaxis2920 It could also be where a clock was (either some of the clockwork broke out as it fell and decayed over time or it is part of the gold casing)
I'd love to see you roleplay some of the earlier steps of the Section 106 process with the Piglins in a Bastion Remnant -- especially since, there ARE actual culturally sensitive issues there around wearing gold while working on the structure and disturbing anything gold that's part of the structure.
I would love to see that because there's something educational to be shown in that instance. How do you excavate and/or restore a site that's both still in use AND has specific, cultural rules one must follow to enter? It'd also work as a little history lesson, how did archeologists tread the issue a century ago vs. how archeologists tread it now. Also side note but I'd love it if there was a mod or a future update that fleshed out piglins and maybe villagers more. Maybe add some sort of, IDK the term, cultural assimilation value? Where piglins grow to accept the player and there's certain things they'll allow once you reach a good standing with them, preferrably by participating in their culture.
@masonchristensen1392 it definitely could be the remnants of jewelry or a coin. But I'm using minecraft items specifically. So, using that, this could have been a bell, gold armor, a gold tool, or just a bigger gold ingot.
Kinda late to the thing but to me this is associated with the ancient builders (armour trims, animal husbandry, pottery sherds linked with other buildings like the desert temples). These people didn't really have bells in their builds (none in the temples, in the nether or in the end). They also seemed to value gold (just look at the loot chests including the desert temples or the blocks of gold in the ocean monuments). Stands to reason that this would either be currency or maybe even the material for the the trim on the armour of some wealthy guy passing through.
I'm blown away you were able to detect any semblance of actual architecture in these piles of debris in the ground. I was always able to distinguish things like patterned floors and brick.... structures? But this one genuinely looks like a small town, even if the original materials chosen look abhorrent. Great job.
I think a broken over tower makes the most sense, since that flat roof of the tower reminds me of other 'ruin' structures like the pillars in the Ancient cities
the criscross brick hole is either a well or grain storage. the beams allow you to climb down to collect water if the water is low if its a well(though a ladder would make more sense). if it's grain storage, the crossmembers provide areas to sit/stand to airate the grain with a shovel. the beams would also provide something to grab onto/block you so the grain doesnt suck you to the bottom if you fall. this is a very big hazard with storing grain.
Imagine that world 1 was how it started - then some attack took place and damaged the lookout tower. The village, weakened by the attack and less wealthy than before, rebuilt the structure as best they could and used the fallen tower top as a signal fire station. Could be, could be. Without primary sources such as a description of battle or some local's diary or even oral history of an event, we could never be sure.
About the animal pen around 15:30, cauldrons full of water have featured in Minecraft villages as leatherworker workstations for a while. In fact, in the Bedrock edition, you can use the cauldron to dye leather or wash it clean of dyes.
@@xGOKOPx It’s a birch forest now, but climates can shift over time. The geology of _Minecraft’s_ world generation is pretty chaotic when compared to Earth and suggests a very geologically active planet (which could perhaps also explain why the ruins were so deep underground and so well-preserved). Who’s to say it wasn’t a drier region back when the trail ruins were in use?
Something you could do that you may not know to enhance the beacon status of the tower in world one would be to place hay underneath the campfires and open the roof, that would result in a taller smoke trail. The reasoning being that traders and travels would logically be able to spot the smoke at a much further distance then the tower itself acting as a better beacon. Edit: Adding onto this, the tower serving as a beacon with the aid of smoke could logically be used as a form of robust communication with any nearby settlement by use of smoke signals, perhaps the tower could be used to warn of any incoming danger ahead of time be it something like a pillager raid (using Minecraft’s world building) or the presence of any especially dangerous group of mobs in the area.
@@daskalosBCEif the top of the tower fell any evidence of an opening could have been concealed with how it fell, another point is with the glass windows encapsulating the space without a way to vent the space (again granted it’s minecraft so this isn’t modelled) the glass would get covered in soot unless regularly cleaned in a very smoky environment which would have been difficult given how frequently it would need to be done even if the fires had been extinguished at the moment. Granted that feels like a bit of a stretch but I still don’t know if a building with that large a pyre wouldn’t have some form of ventilation. Regardless it’s an amazing build and definitely an inspiration nonetheless.
The red brick building, locus G I think, looks to be something like a brick kiln or draft kilm. the greenware clay bricks and pots would be laid across the open slats and the open top would pull air up from the bottom where the firebox would be. the draft and spacing would increase the temperature of the fire as it is fed fuel and oxygen and fire the clay. I imagine there would be a way for someone to either climb down to the firebox, or maybe stairs to provide easier access to the rest of the kiln below. Thank you for the awesome video!
I was looking for this suggestion, I saw a different video where it was converted into this function and it seems to make the most sense. Gotta have some place to dry all those pots and terracotta, right?
I have one of those structures in my world. It has a below-ground section that holds 2 blast furnaces, and an external ladder down to them! I've been racking my brain trying to tie the entire structure together, and I think you've nailed it.
Although I like this theory there is actually a "decoration" as the files call it that is for sure a place that was used to cook the terracotta, bricks, and pottery.
I was thinking that a lot of the brick 'slats' were collapsed from different floors, but that's not a bad idea either, especially given the size of the pots being a full block.
I think the "random" armor trims could be some sort of trade currency, they're super valuable today, could also be back then, even if the people who inhabited these places could make it themselves
Ever since they've been added to the game and I discovered that if you removed all the dirt and gravel you'd get clear ruins hinting at actual buildings, I've been soooooo curious of how it would look. Thank you soooooo much for answering this question and making this video, it was so interesting! Also, I prefer world 1 with the sort of lighthouse-y tower
I LOVE THIS!!! You brought back memories of my late father who was an archaeologist and geologist. I sure miss going on digs with him. He taught me so much. Subscribed!
Ya, world 1 definitely feels right. I hope you don't mind, but I'm definitely gonna be taking some inspiration from this when restoring my trail ruins. I'll also be doing things differently tho for creative purposes.
Love your recreation! I think the tower did have a big broken off piece, so the first world is more accurate. I imagine the building with crisscross bricks is either a cistern for fresh water, or a sewage building to drain out waste water from the town.
With the blast furnaces at the bottom, I wondered if it might not have been some sort of huge, strange draft furnace sort of deal. The sort of thing you built to obtain a single ingot of iron at a time for really poor ore with insufficient temperatures. 😂
Of all the rebuilds I've seen, this one is by far and away my favorite! You've done such a lovely job with this series and it's been very fun to watch! I do feel that both worlds are good, however I think that maybe the terracotta on locus B was part of the tower, and the brick/campfires were their own structure. The campfires could have provided a signal to distant travelers that civilization was near, while the tower provided coverage for a lookout of sorts. That's just my interpretation, though!
I would say the cross-cross brick hole is perhaps a cistern of some description? It didn’t necessarily store water, but it seems to me that it was a bulk-storage area.
so how would you imagine a "village" like that would most likely..."tie into the surroundings." like...I'm sure there'd be fields all around, surely roads leading up to the town...but what else?
With my interpretation video I hypothesized that the ruins were a place of commerce. So, I would think that people lived around the area and the further you got from the village the more rural it would be
That was my thought. I also feel there's something vaguely military about it - one armory makes sense considering the dangers of the Minecraft world, but 2 seems a little overkill. So maybe the settlement was initially a guard tower at the edge of some country, and then locals began to trade there until it became a proper town.
@@ternovnik257 like modern-day York? I know it started its archeological life as a Roman outpost, then became a place to conduct trade with the Celtic tribes further north, before morphing into a full city
I think that locus b could indeed be constructed of debris from the top of the tower, but I don't think that the bricks supporting it are a part of the tower. the structure of the brick portion of locus b is nearly identical to the structure of foundations found in the complex, while not resembling any of the roofs found in the complex. we only see bricks used as a roofing material once, with supporting arches, in a layer only one block thick. the style of roof suggested by including the brick portion of locus b in the tower would be highly resource intensive, requiring far more brick than necessary to construct and placing an incredible weight on the underlying structure. therefore, I propose that locus b is, in fact, a small structure or outdoor area that was crushed by debris from the tower's collapse.
I'm on team 1. I do think that the road should be a bit above the ground though, roads usually are to avoid flooding. Roman roads tend to have ditches on both sides for that effect while Mayan roads in places like El Mirador just are above the ground in a similar look to this. In this case that probably matters less since it is the top of a hill but that wouldn't have stopped someone like the Romans from making ditches. It is fun to restore ruins in games, I have done it in Rimworld myself a couple of times.
I like the world where the tower collapsed, and was restored. I didnt see it at first, but after seeing it restored, now I cant unsee it. Amazing reverse archaeology/engineering. The mystery locus with the brick roof: I think its a warehouse/larder/grain silo, going down instead of up to keep the stores cool. Ground level would be all the chests, and the Quartermaster point of sale desk. Criss cross pattern below would support hay bales and mushroom growing plots of podzol. ladders and trapdoors for access. Possibly a secret alchemy lab in deep basement... The side animal pens area- I think they should heavily lean towards Horse/donkey/Llama industry. Stables, grooming, milking, breeding. Crafting table/cauldron for leather armor dying/saddle/'horseshoes' The Tower would house/equip the Soldier Garrison assigned to police/protect the place, with a crossbow/sword shop tucked in one one level, bunks on another. ----- So ultimately the Village as a whole was less of a town and more of a one stop service/rest station (like a fantasy world truck stop), for farmers in the region and travellers passing through. It even has a Diner setup for a nice rest. I recommend fleshing the place out with villagers,corralled into shop stalls and stuff. If going really crazy, farmer townhouses out in the fields, horse grazing pens and ranches to justify the Trail Truckstop's existence. :)
I'd argue there probably once were adjacent farm land and living places, but because they were all from organic matter like wood they've all rotten away. Keeping only the market hub which was made from more permanent materials. In conjunction with that, I'd argue that these Ruins predate the common Religion in Minecraft, as in most living villages the Churches are always the most permanent structures.
30:16 I wonder if the nugget represents a clock of some kind. They’re the only furniture item I can think of in Minecraft that’s made of gold, it makes some sense since it’s positioned where as many people as possible can see it, and I’ve seen clocks in similar locations in shopping centres and the like. Alternatively, some kind of currency? It is a market after all.
both good theories, there's also the above comment about it being a bell, but i like the idea that it was one of the trim materials. you see this all the time in real world history where their armor and weapons might be a bit lacking compared to what was available or came later, but they absolutely loved to put decorations on it. I heard one person call the early Anglo-Saxons/Vikings psychopathic peacocks because they would put gold wire trim, worked gold, or garnet ("poor man's ruby") cloisonne on everything
I love this so much! I think the tower makes a bit more sense as a lighthouse/beacon than as a lookout if this really was a peaceful market, and since there's already a blacksmith and a shared firepit I can't think of any reason for another shared oven. It's so cool to imagine what these places would have been like, and I actually like the more claustrophobic feel, it's a great contrast to the wide open areas and larger-scaled mega builds we're more used to, yeah in a 1:1 scale world you might want to use something smaller than a metre cubed as a pillar down the middle of the road, but at the same time it gives it this stable, cosy feeling, I can imagine a culture who moves at a slower, more peaceful pace, gradually taking their time to see the entire market, where we might be frustrated to not be able to see all of such a tiny street, they might enjoy discovering things as they come to them, and I can imagine children playing hiding/racing games between the pillars!
That single unstripped burch log in building H has been taunting me since you first started on locus G until you fixed it 2/3 of the way through the glamour shots.
I think that criss cross building you didn't understand was an aquafer. water would leach in from the soil or maybe collect from rain. it could be that the different beams are places for you to stand as the water level lowers. it seems pretty weird that every modern village has a well but this one doesn't.
These are so much fun to watch. I wanted to be an archeologist growing up but never got the opportunity. Thank you for doing this and giving us all your wonderful knowledge 🙏
I think the animal pen could be the leather work house from the standard villages The cauldron can be used for dyeing leather and the dye, ores and and armour trims could be the remnants of an old leather armour pieces on armour stands that disintegrated over time Also for building B, it could be a kiln for making all of the jars and pots around the town
I'm surprised that there are so many people who believe that it was probably one tower. The way I see it, there is no way the top of the tower did an exact 180, fell exactly perpendicular, and had the roof perfectly intact after it crashed down, which also happens to be the same material as some other foundations. There must be something missing there. I actually like the theory in the comments of the last video, where people were saying that it might have been a kiln. That makes a lot of sense to me. Granted though, both versions are beautiful. If it wasn't supposed to be an accurate interpretation, it'd be tough to pick a favorite. Almost every part of this restoration looks gorgeous.
Regarding the top of the tower; I seem to faintly recall you mentioning in one of the excavation videos that you think the bricks in structure 2 could have been used as a representation of rubble/shattered terracotta; going from that, I am now thinking if the tower may have been a floor higher yet, without the rim around it at the top, that that was merely the result of the thing coming down and crushing its top floor, forcing the rubble out to the side
I think the building at 25:13 would have been a food production area. -dirt to grow the wheat -beetroot seeds in the other room -a hoe -wheat storage pots -open to the sun Just a thought.
the fireplace thing at 27:39 could be a kiln , since those ruins are one of the only place where you find pottery sherds , it could be the place where the ancient residents used to fire them , with degradation , it only looked like a weird square building , but maybe it would make more sense if it was just a tall furnace to fire those pots in
The brick bulding with criss-crossing floor beams could be a water well with some filtration system. I have seen old wells with similar walls within, although without crisis crossing. Those have walls in one orientation so the water can flow from one section to another over internal walls and retain sediments.
I really enjoyed this. Fun to see your viewpoint with your background IRL. As a tip - when you show case and point - don't shake the mouse to show what you talk about, and keep the view for a second or so longer when moving - will make your shots smoother and more pleasant to watch. Edit in an arrow if needed later^^ Im guessing the gold nugget found would be currency used instead of coins from the old
A tip for building on things like trapdoors and other blocks with a right-click function like furnaces while you're in Creative mode, is that you can hold Shift and Space at the same time while flying to be able to sneak-place blocks without having to be on the ground - leaving this because of how you had to fiddle with placing the red candle in the first building, and figured it might come in handy somewhere else down the line.
You remind me a little of Any Austin. His whole bit is that he looks at video game worlds through lenses that you don’t usually with a sort of mild mannered deadpan- his flagship series is the one where he calculates the unemployment of cities in Pokémon and Skyrim
22:46 You probably wouldn't normally want a pit kiln for making charcoal or firing clay right in the middle of your town, but when I look at that criss-crossing brick structure, all I can think of is a kiln of some kind. Call it a hunch.
I like the idea with the first one, where you put the fires in the tower, it makes me think it was used as some sort of beacon or way to let travelers know where the city is
28:28 the road being one tile above makes sense if it is intended to represent how road is arched to let the water drip down the sides, kinda like /TTT\
Found this series a bit late, but it's been a joy to watch through. Also, I think it could be possible, that the tower was once intact, like the second version you built. Then, once it crumbled, instead of fixing it fully, the inhabitants started to use it as a fire pit.
29:46 I would say that that armour trim could have been a personal belonging from the stall owner, or, depending why the place was abandoned (like with a natural disaster), from someone else who happened to be carrying that and died there.
I watched every episode and I think you did a wonderful job piecing it together as it once was, it looks flawless and amazing. makes me wanna start up minecraft just to excavate my own set of ruins and be an archeologist.
The building with the brick crisscrosses was probably some form of firing pit. Brick is generally heat resistant and could work as an excellent place for the ancient trail civilization to fire their mud and clay bricks as well as some pottery.
Maybe the building with the criss-crossing brick beams was some sort of cistern, well or water basin? Would explain why the subterranean part is too narrow to navigate
I'd love to see you do something similar for some of the other structures in the game, such as the Ancient City, the Bastion Remnants, and some of the Ruined Portal variants. I'm curious what you might think they would've looked like.
The fully restored trail ruins really remind me a lot of villager towns, but with the structures more closely built together and it got me thinking...It would be so much nicer if they were instead added into Villages as a kind of "downtown" or "central market" instead of being pointlessly buried underneath the ground.
Is it possible that the basement building thing is actually a sort of cellar that exists to keep things cool during the summer months? Though I suppose it would be hard to identify it as anything like that without corroborating evidence. Also that gold nugget was possibly just a coin or something someone dropped assuming they used minted currency, could also be that they used gold nuggets as currency.
I agree that the gold nugget is probably an old coin, or since emeralds are Minecraft's currency perhaps a piece of lost jewelry? We know they decorated their armor because of the armor trims, so jewelry isn't out of the question
woohoo finally got around to watching this yippeee XD i'd say that the tower in world 1 definitely seems to fit better. absolutely loved the remake and explaination as always
I’m definitely in the world one camp. The pieces just fit too well together. I wonder if the campfires maybe came later, though. As pointed out in another comment and your response to it, a beacon like that should have some ventilation or the soot would build up on the glass, but there was no evidence of a hole. So perhaps that level of the tower was a lookout post and someone else came by (before the ruins were completely swallowed by the ground) and camped in the ruins at some point. This was a fantastic series and I’m looking forward to watching the ancient city one. I’ve had an idea for quite a while now to restore a stronghold to livable status and I think these series are restarting that want.
The floor at 14:30 could have been made with sections of wood planks or something else which has already decayed. -I like that later in the video, we can see that this is what you did.
Have absolutely 0 background in archaeology or anything, but could the criss-crossing underground brick beams be some sort of food storage/drying/salting/preparation area? I don't know why I got that feeling from it when you were showing the finished product off, but I did.
By the way, you can use this command to give you an invisible item frame to make placing items in your world more seamless (prime example: the farmer's stall) /give @p minecraft:item_frame{EntityTag:{Invisible:1}}
So, based on your earlier interpretations and this rebuild, it looks like this was a trading outpost. Selling farm goods at first, but later incorporating a militaristic trade as well. Possibly rasing pigs as foodstuffs for those who lived there.
@@timwoods2852 Ooh... I honestly haven't done much with beet roots myself, so I didn't realise these can be used for pigs as well.. My Pigs are usually raised on carrots. So, they may have had pigs as well, but i still think cows areore obvious.
A friend and I were watching the video together. You basically left Locus G alone since you weren't sure what to make of it. However, my friend and I were talking about it and would like to suggest that Locus G might have been a place to process animal remains above the blast furnace. Either by drying the skins or smoking food. That way the gaps would be a purposeful part of the building rather than a place where material had gone missing.
I call the ruins past inhabitants The Chinkasqakuna. It means The Lost Ones in the Quechua language. I've developed a whole theory about them including a possible cause for their disappearance and my main theory is they were displaced and wiped out by the now present Illagers.
does the theory include a whole empire/kingdoms that fell apart and are now nothing more than villager settlements because of the influence of the illagers? btw, i love the idea, and would love to see the whole theory
The candles fit pretty well in the top of the pots, so it's possible at least some of the pots could represent lamps of some kind, especially given how common sherds are across all structures.
Nice, though around 7:10 you talk about villages not having texturing, they do, the cobblestone is mixed with mossy cobblestone in the village buildings.
The brick structure with the criss crossed bricks might have been a rain catcher to store water. As the water depletes the cross bricks allow people to easily reach the lower levels to continue refilling their buckets.
Imagine if there was a village nearby this, and they considered these ruins to be of their ancestors. So you had stakeholders to talk to. What if they didnt want the site disturbed with an excavation but were ok with ground penetrating radar. Then you used an xray texture pack to simulate that, you take some screenshots and then have to interpret the site based on those xrayed screenshots.
Armor trims can indicate guards and the point where they were killed, as if it was a trade post that was raided .
That make sense
that would be a bit weird since armors trims are sort of templates for the trims, not the "trim" themselves. if we had found piece of armor in bad condition that would make more sense, but we don't, so i would assume they either made them, sold them, or something of the sort. since we don't find any armor or piece of weaponry in the trail ruins, i'd also assume those were all trading villages like the ones we find in the game nowadays, like peaceful tribes that could have sold them to wandering travellers like us the players
@@Soabacwell if the armor was made of leather it could have rotted away, leaving only the trim behind
I think that 1-block hole by the furnaces and the iron bars that you theorized could have melted at 3:06 was build like that to hold lava, like blacksmiths in villages.
Or was a fireplace thing, used for baking bread, or cooking.
@@Real_Moon-Moonwith the placement of a smiting table, it's more likely to be a blacksmith location.
@@larrylightfoot22222
That makes sense. Sorry, I’m a tad blind, even with my glasses on.
@@Real_Moon-Moon I felt this in my soul.
Yes.
A part of me wants to suggest that the golden nugget found on the central walkway may have been a piece of currency.
Since it was at a higher level, it may have been accidentally dropped by someone exploring the ruins in the past, just passing through on the line of the old road system, or be a hoard deposition.
I think it was maybe a bell (Like the one in villages) and the bell was stolen but the little ball thing inside fell out. That ball thing being the nugget.
Makes sense considering piglins trade with gold.
@@verticleaxis2920 It could also be where a clock was (either some of the clockwork broke out as it fell and decayed over time or it is part of the gold casing)
he said that on the one where he was looking at everything
I'd love to see you roleplay some of the earlier steps of the Section 106 process with the Piglins in a Bastion Remnant -- especially since, there ARE actual culturally sensitive issues there around wearing gold while working on the structure and disturbing anything gold that's part of the structure.
Ha! That’s a great idea!
Yeah, great idea!
They are the most lottable structure
I would love to see that because there's something educational to be shown in that instance. How do you excavate and/or restore a site that's both still in use AND has specific, cultural rules one must follow to enter? It'd also work as a little history lesson, how did archeologists tread the issue a century ago vs. how archeologists tread it now.
Also side note but I'd love it if there was a mod or a future update that fleshed out piglins and maybe villagers more. Maybe add some sort of, IDK the term, cultural assimilation value? Where piglins grow to accept the player and there's certain things they'll allow once you reach a good standing with them, preferrably by participating in their culture.
is it archeology if the ruins are still inhabited yeah its ruined but the piglins still live their
30:26 i think that gold nugget could be what's left of a bell. They appear in most villages and we are drawing connections to them.
Could it also be some ancient coin or something?
@masonchristensen1392 it definitely could be the remnants of jewelry or a coin. But I'm using minecraft items specifically.
So, using that, this could have been a bell, gold armor, a gold tool, or just a bigger gold ingot.
@@masonchristensen1392 I had that same thought
Kinda late to the thing but to me this is associated with the ancient builders (armour trims, animal husbandry, pottery sherds linked with other buildings like the desert temples). These people didn't really have bells in their builds (none in the temples, in the nether or in the end). They also seemed to value gold (just look at the loot chests including the desert temples or the blocks of gold in the ocean monuments).
Stands to reason that this would either be currency or maybe even the material for the the trim on the armour of some wealthy guy passing through.
I'm blown away you were able to detect any semblance of actual architecture in these piles of debris in the ground. I was always able to distinguish things like patterned floors and brick.... structures? But this one genuinely looks like a small town, even if the original materials chosen look abhorrent. Great job.
thank you!
26:50 I love how he looks directly at the first ruin spot and wonders if the tree he planted has always been there
So I went back and watched, the taller tree wasn’t there in the beginning, haha!
One of the saplings you didn't bonemeal yourself was waiting to photobomb you 😅
I think a broken over tower makes the most sense, since that flat roof of the tower reminds me of other 'ruin' structures like the pillars in the Ancient cities
the criscross brick hole is either a well or grain storage. the beams allow you to climb down to collect water if the water is low if its a well(though a ladder would make more sense). if it's grain storage, the crossmembers provide areas to sit/stand to airate the grain with a shovel. the beams would also provide something to grab onto/block you so the grain doesnt suck you to the bottom if you fall. this is a very big hazard with storing grain.
He didnt show it but there is actually a ladder off to the side that goes to the bottom of this structure.
Yeah, but what of the blast furnaces that are at the bottom? Putting hay in there would be a real fire hazard.
@@cawareyoudoin7379 grain, not hay. The heat could be useful for properly drying the grain
@@chimera9922 ok, yeah, if we're thinking real life not Minecraft, those two are distinguishable.
@@cawareyoudoin7379 Could absolutely be a giant Kiln for fireing clay pots with those blast furnaces at the bottom.
Imagine that world 1 was how it started - then some attack took place and damaged the lookout tower. The village, weakened by the attack and less wealthy than before, rebuilt the structure as best they could and used the fallen tower top as a signal fire station.
Could be, could be. Without primary sources such as a description of battle or some local's diary or even oral history of an event, we could never be sure.
That could very well be it.
About the animal pen around 15:30, cauldrons full of water have featured in Minecraft villages as leatherworker workstations for a while. In fact, in the Bedrock edition, you can use the cauldron to dye leather or wash it clean of dyes.
Especially with the presence of armor trims around the area. It was likely a leatherworking station
it is likely that the animal pens are made to hold cows instead of horses, since that is where you would source the leather from
Yes! Another convert to the Church of Birch! (It makes sense they'd use birch since these were found in an old-growth birch forest.)
its very convincingly an arid or near equatorial culture, protection from the sun is the primary concern, i love that
It could be protection from rain and cold too, weather in general
It was in a birch forest though
@@xGOKOPx
It’s a birch forest now, but climates can shift over time. The geology of _Minecraft’s_ world generation is pretty chaotic when compared to Earth and suggests a very geologically active planet (which could perhaps also explain why the ruins were so deep underground and so well-preserved). Who’s to say it wasn’t a drier region back when the trail ruins were in use?
The weird crisscrossing bricks underground make me think of an earth kiln
Something you could do that you may not know to enhance the beacon status of the tower in world one would be to place hay underneath the campfires and open the roof, that would result in a taller smoke trail. The reasoning being that traders and travels would logically be able to spot the smoke at a much further distance then the tower itself acting as a better beacon.
Edit: Adding onto this, the tower serving as a beacon with the aid of smoke could logically be used as a form of robust communication with any nearby settlement by use of smoke signals, perhaps the tower could be used to warn of any incoming danger ahead of time be it something like a pillager raid (using Minecraft’s world building) or the presence of any especially dangerous group of mobs in the area.
The brick was solid throughout, so no evidence of a hole
@@daskalosBCEif the top of the tower fell any evidence of an opening could have been concealed with how it fell, another point is with the glass windows encapsulating the space without a way to vent the space (again granted it’s minecraft so this isn’t modelled) the glass would get covered in soot unless regularly cleaned in a very smoky environment which would have been difficult given how frequently it would need to be done even if the fires had been extinguished at the moment.
Granted that feels like a bit of a stretch but I still don’t know if a building with that large a pyre wouldn’t have some form of ventilation. Regardless it’s an amazing build and definitely an inspiration nonetheless.
@@goodaccountname2018instresting
The red brick building, locus G I think, looks to be something like a brick kiln or draft kilm. the greenware clay bricks and pots would be laid across the open slats and the open top would pull air up from the bottom where the firebox would be. the draft and spacing would increase the temperature of the fire as it is fed fuel and oxygen and fire the clay. I imagine there would be a way for someone to either climb down to the firebox, or maybe stairs to provide easier access to the rest of the kiln below.
Thank you for the awesome video!
I was looking for this suggestion, I saw a different video where it was converted into this function and it seems to make the most sense. Gotta have some place to dry all those pots and terracotta, right?
I have one of those structures in my world. It has a below-ground section that holds 2 blast furnaces, and an external ladder down to them! I've been racking my brain trying to tie the entire structure together, and I think you've nailed it.
Although I like this theory there is actually a "decoration" as the files call it that is for sure a place that was used to cook the terracotta, bricks, and pottery.
I was thinking that a lot of the brick 'slats' were collapsed from different floors, but that's not a bad idea either, especially given the size of the pots being a full block.
I think the "random" armor trims could be some sort of trade currency, they're super valuable today, could also be back then, even if the people who inhabited these places could make it themselves
so THATS why we dont see birch villages. 11:17 it is because they are too chill and aesthetically pleasing somehow so it was destroyed.
Ever since they've been added to the game and I discovered that if you removed all the dirt and gravel you'd get clear ruins hinting at actual buildings, I've been soooooo curious of how it would look. Thank you soooooo much for answering this question and making this video, it was so interesting! Also, I prefer world 1 with the sort of lighthouse-y tower
I LOVE THIS!!! You brought back memories of my late father who was an archaeologist and geologist. I sure miss going on digs with him. He taught me so much. Subscribed!
It would be interesting if you did the same thing for the Ancient City.
Ya, world 1 definitely feels right. I hope you don't mind, but I'm definitely gonna be taking some inspiration from this when restoring my trail ruins. I'll also be doing things differently tho for creative purposes.
Go for it!
Love your recreation! I think the tower did have a big broken off piece, so the first world is more accurate. I imagine the building with crisscross bricks is either a cistern for fresh water, or a sewage building to drain out waste water from the town.
Or 'ts some sort of a coal pit
With the blast furnaces at the bottom, I wondered if it might not have been some sort of huge, strange draft furnace sort of deal. The sort of thing you built to obtain a single ingot of iron at a time for really poor ore with insufficient temperatures. 😂
Of all the rebuilds I've seen, this one is by far and away my favorite! You've done such a lovely job with this series and it's been very fun to watch! I do feel that both worlds are good, however I think that maybe the terracotta on locus B was part of the tower, and the brick/campfires were their own structure. The campfires could have provided a signal to distant travelers that civilization was near, while the tower provided coverage for a lookout of sorts. That's just my interpretation, though!
I like it! thats definitely a possibility!
I would say the cross-cross brick hole is perhaps a cistern of some description? It didn’t necessarily store water, but it seems to me that it was a bulk-storage area.
Perhaps a cemetery?
@@Meaty_AberrationMaybe? It could be some sort of vertical catacomb.
I was thinking a root cellar to keep food.
@@taylorhillard4868I could see that too
so how would you imagine a "village" like that would most likely..."tie into the surroundings." like...I'm sure there'd be fields all around, surely roads leading up to the town...but what else?
With my interpretation video I hypothesized that the ruins were a place of commerce. So, I would think that people lived around the area and the further you got from the village the more rural it would be
@@daskalosBCE sounds good. might be interesting to have your builder friend do a glow up of the surroundings on one or both of the restorations...heh.
This has a more of an outpost feel.
Like a stop used to rest and resupply in very long journeys.
That was my thought. I also feel there's something vaguely military about it - one armory makes sense considering the dangers of the Minecraft world, but 2 seems a little overkill. So maybe the settlement was initially a guard tower at the edge of some country, and then locals began to trade there until it became a proper town.
@@ternovnik257 like modern-day York? I know it started its archeological life as a Roman outpost, then became a place to conduct trade with the Celtic tribes further north, before morphing into a full city
I think that locus b could indeed be constructed of debris from the top of the tower, but I don't think that the bricks supporting it are a part of the tower. the structure of the brick portion of locus b is nearly identical to the structure of foundations found in the complex, while not resembling any of the roofs found in the complex. we only see bricks used as a roofing material once, with supporting arches, in a layer only one block thick. the style of roof suggested by including the brick portion of locus b in the tower would be highly resource intensive, requiring far more brick than necessary to construct and placing an incredible weight on the underlying structure. therefore, I propose that locus b is, in fact, a small structure or outdoor area that was crushed by debris from the tower's collapse.
I’m a wildlife biologist but I’ve fallen down the archaeology rabbit hole of youtube, with this and miniminuteman
I'm on team 1.
I do think that the road should be a bit above the ground though, roads usually are to avoid flooding. Roman roads tend to have ditches on both sides for that effect while Mayan roads in places like El Mirador just are above the ground in a similar look to this.
In this case that probably matters less since it is the top of a hill but that wouldn't have stopped someone like the Romans from making ditches.
It is fun to restore ruins in games, I have done it in Rimworld myself a couple of times.
I like the world where the tower collapsed, and was restored. I didnt see it at first, but after seeing it restored, now I cant unsee it. Amazing reverse archaeology/engineering.
The mystery locus with the brick roof: I think its a warehouse/larder/grain silo, going down instead of up to keep the stores cool. Ground level would be all the chests, and the
Quartermaster point of sale desk. Criss cross pattern below would support hay bales and mushroom growing plots of podzol. ladders and trapdoors for access. Possibly a secret alchemy lab in deep basement...
The side animal pens area- I think they should heavily lean towards Horse/donkey/Llama industry. Stables, grooming, milking, breeding. Crafting table/cauldron for leather armor dying/saddle/'horseshoes'
The Tower would house/equip the Soldier Garrison assigned to police/protect the place, with a crossbow/sword shop tucked in one one level, bunks on another.
-----
So ultimately the Village as a whole was less of a town and more of a one stop service/rest station (like a fantasy world truck stop), for farmers in the region and travellers passing through. It even has a Diner setup for a nice rest.
I recommend fleshing the place out with villagers,corralled into shop stalls and stuff. If going really crazy, farmer townhouses out in the fields, horse grazing pens and ranches to justify the Trail Truckstop's existence. :)
I'd argue there probably once were adjacent farm land and living places, but because they were all from organic matter like wood they've all rotten away. Keeping only the market hub which was made from more permanent materials.
In conjunction with that, I'd argue that these Ruins predate the common Religion in Minecraft, as in most living villages the Churches are always the most permanent structures.
30:16 I wonder if the nugget represents a clock of some kind. They’re the only furniture item I can think of in Minecraft that’s made of gold, it makes some sense since it’s positioned where as many people as possible can see it, and I’ve seen clocks in similar locations in shopping centres and the like.
Alternatively, some kind of currency? It is a market after all.
both good theories, there's also the above comment about it being a bell, but i like the idea that it was one of the trim materials. you see this all the time in real world history where their armor and weapons might be a bit lacking compared to what was available or came later, but they absolutely loved to put decorations on it. I heard one person call the early Anglo-Saxons/Vikings psychopathic peacocks because they would put gold wire trim, worked gold, or garnet ("poor man's ruby") cloisonne on everything
I love this so much! I think the tower makes a bit more sense as a lighthouse/beacon than as a lookout if this really was a peaceful market, and since there's already a blacksmith and a shared firepit I can't think of any reason for another shared oven. It's so cool to imagine what these places would have been like, and I actually like the more claustrophobic feel, it's a great contrast to the wide open areas and larger-scaled mega builds we're more used to, yeah in a 1:1 scale world you might want to use something smaller than a metre cubed as a pillar down the middle of the road, but at the same time it gives it this stable, cosy feeling, I can imagine a culture who moves at a slower, more peaceful pace, gradually taking their time to see the entire market, where we might be frustrated to not be able to see all of such a tiny street, they might enjoy discovering things as they come to them, and I can imagine children playing hiding/racing games between the pillars!
this made me emotional
That single unstripped burch log in building H has been taunting me since you first started on locus G until you fixed it 2/3 of the way through the glamour shots.
I think that criss cross building you didn't understand was an aquafer. water would leach in from the soil or maybe collect from rain. it could be that the different beams are places for you to stand as the water level lowers. it seems pretty weird that every modern village has a well but this one doesn't.
World 1 for sure. The tower makes a lot more sense, and really brings out the rest of the build.
I like your reconstruction a lot better than other videos doing the same thing!
Thank you, I appreciate that!
These are so much fun to watch. I wanted to be an archeologist growing up but never got the opportunity. Thank you for doing this and giving us all your wonderful knowledge 🙏
I think the animal pen could be the leather work house from the standard villages
The cauldron can be used for dyeing leather and the dye, ores and and armour trims could be the remnants of an old leather armour pieces on armour stands that disintegrated over time
Also for building B, it could be a kiln for making all of the jars and pots around the town
I'm surprised that there are so many people who believe that it was probably one tower. The way I see it, there is no way the top of the tower did an exact 180, fell exactly perpendicular, and had the roof perfectly intact after it crashed down, which also happens to be the same material as some other foundations.
There must be something missing there. I actually like the theory in the comments of the last video, where people were saying that it might have been a kiln. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Granted though, both versions are beautiful. If it wasn't supposed to be an accurate interpretation, it'd be tough to pick a favorite. Almost every part of this restoration looks gorgeous.
Minecraft is a bit limited in the angle blocks can sit...
@@bepisenjoyer It is, but 90 degrees is one of those angles. There's also just too many other coincidences for me not to doubt the theory.
Regarding the top of the tower; I seem to faintly recall you mentioning in one of the excavation videos that you think the bricks in structure 2 could have been used as a representation of rubble/shattered terracotta; going from that, I am now thinking if the tower may have been a floor higher yet, without the rim around it at the top, that that was merely the result of the thing coming down and crushing its top floor, forcing the rubble out to the side
Could also be crushed crenelations and battlements, if the roof was meant to be accessed
Yes. I thought you forgot. 😅
I think the building at 25:13 would have been a food production area.
-dirt to grow the wheat
-beetroot seeds in the other room
-a hoe
-wheat storage pots
-open to the sun
Just a thought.
the fireplace thing at 27:39 could be a kiln , since those ruins are one of the only place where you find pottery sherds , it could be the place where the ancient residents used to fire them , with degradation , it only looked like a weird square building , but maybe it would make more sense if it was just a tall furnace to fire those pots in
i remember doing this for ruined portals, it's pretty fun and surprisingly easy.
The brick bulding with criss-crossing floor beams could be a water well with some filtration system. I have seen old wells with similar walls within, although without crisis crossing. Those have walls in one orientation so the water can flow from one section to another over internal walls and retain sediments.
I really enjoyed this. Fun to see your viewpoint with your background IRL.
As a tip - when you show case and point - don't shake the mouse to show what you talk about, and keep the view for a second or so longer when moving - will make your shots smoother and more pleasant to watch. Edit in an arrow if needed later^^
Im guessing the gold nugget found would be currency used instead of coins from the old
A tip for building on things like trapdoors and other blocks with a right-click function like furnaces while you're in Creative mode, is that you can hold Shift and Space at the same time while flying to be able to sneak-place blocks without having to be on the ground - leaving this because of how you had to fiddle with placing the red candle in the first building, and figured it might come in handy somewhere else down the line.
10:10
You can still shift-click blocks while flying. You just need to hold space first and then hold shift while you are still holding space.
"this feels a little claustrophobic" pretty much summarize any minecraft village, so that sounds pretty accurate XD
You remind me a little of Any Austin. His whole bit is that he looks at video game worlds through lenses that you don’t usually with a sort of mild mannered deadpan- his flagship series is the one where he calculates the unemployment of cities in Pokémon and Skyrim
Yes! I was waiting for this since the start of the series!
22:46
You probably wouldn't normally want a pit kiln for making charcoal or firing clay right in the middle of your town, but when I look at that criss-crossing brick structure, all I can think of is a kiln of some kind. Call it a hunch.
So these used to be a type of Bazaar type location? Interesting.
That is my interpretation of these ruins in particular. Other ruins may produce a different outcome
I like the idea with the first one, where you put the fires in the tower, it makes me think it was used as some sort of beacon or way to let travelers know where the city is
22:24 i think this structure is supposed to be a giant brick furnace for drying clay pots
Is it possible some of those glass panes were actually fragments of full blocks? That might explain some of the awkward windows
28:28 the road being one tile above makes sense if it is intended to represent how road is arched to let the water drip down the sides, kinda like /TTT\
Found this series a bit late, but it's been a joy to watch through.
Also, I think it could be possible, that the tower was once intact, like the second version you built. Then, once it crumbled, instead of fixing it fully, the inhabitants started to use it as a fire pit.
Watching the full series makes this restauration very satisfying, but i am glad you also kept the original intact.
28:35 Missed opportunity to say "I think they're 'grate'."
29:46
I would say that that armour trim could have been a personal belonging from the stall owner, or, depending why the place was abandoned (like with a natural disaster), from someone else who happened to be carrying that and died there.
I watched every episode and I think you did a wonderful job piecing it together as it once was, it looks flawless and amazing. makes me wanna start up minecraft just to excavate my own set of ruins and be an archeologist.
The building with the brick crisscrosses was probably some form of firing pit. Brick is generally heat resistant and could work as an excellent place for the ancient trail civilization to fire their mud and clay bricks as well as some pottery.
I agree with the assessment that the side pillars would work nicely as fence posts. This was super cool!
Maybe the building with the criss-crossing brick beams was some sort of cistern, well or water basin? Would explain why the subterranean part is too narrow to navigate
22:30 I think this one could be a place for something like "jump trial", so maybe there SHOUD be a holes on the floor
12:10 I think possibly that pot could've been on a rack. Maybe there's more pots on it too. Perhaps store some food (on extinguished campfires).
5:50 placing modern ideas of beauty on past 😂 poor birch
I'd love to see you do something similar for some of the other structures in the game, such as the Ancient City, the Bastion Remnants, and some of the Ruined Portal variants. I'm curious what you might think they would've looked like.
The fully restored trail ruins really remind me a lot of villager towns, but with the structures more closely built together and it got me thinking...It would be so much nicer if they were instead added into Villages as a kind of "downtown" or "central market" instead of being pointlessly buried underneath the ground.
10:17 you can hold CROUCH and JUMP together to function like crouching but in the air
Is it possible that the basement building thing is actually a sort of cellar that exists to keep things cool during the summer months?
Though I suppose it would be hard to identify it as anything like that without corroborating evidence.
Also that gold nugget was possibly just a coin or something someone dropped assuming they used minted currency, could also be that they used gold nuggets as currency.
I agree that the gold nugget is probably an old coin, or since emeralds are Minecraft's currency perhaps a piece of lost jewelry? We know they decorated their armor because of the armor trims, so jewelry isn't out of the question
Yeah, I think that the tower broke off, makes sense
I really can't decide which i prefer. I love both of them and this video!
Wonder what the deep dark would look like when people still lived there because it's obvious people lived there at some point.
30:15 I think that gold nugget was currency back then. People today lose money on the streets all the time, it would've been no different back then.
woohoo finally got around to watching this yippeee XD
i'd say that the tower in world 1 definitely seems to fit better. absolutely loved the remake and explaination as always
Beautifullll i hope you do more ruins methodically like this.
Doing the ancient city right now!
@@daskalosBCE aww thanks for the reply. Stoked to see more! Just binged it
I’m definitely in the world one camp. The pieces just fit too well together. I wonder if the campfires maybe came later, though. As pointed out in another comment and your response to it, a beacon like that should have some ventilation or the soot would build up on the glass, but there was no evidence of a hole. So perhaps that level of the tower was a lookout post and someone else came by (before the ruins were completely swallowed by the ground) and camped in the ruins at some point.
This was a fantastic series and I’m looking forward to watching the ancient city one. I’ve had an idea for quite a while now to restore a stronghold to livable status and I think these series are restarting that want.
The both look nice, but I like the lore of world 2's tower collapsing. Great work!
That's cool!
Both World 1 and World 2 look good.
The floor at 14:30 could have been made with sections of wood planks or something else which has already decayed. -I like that later in the video, we can see that this is what you did.
This is impressive! I'd love to see you take on an Ancient City in the Deep Dark biome.
Well, be sure to tune in this Saturday at 10am MST as Oda and I start to tackle just that!
22:50
Some kind of storage cellar?
Or maybe its some kind of water drainage system.
Have absolutely 0 background in archaeology or anything, but could the criss-crossing underground brick beams be some sort of food storage/drying/salting/preparation area? I don't know why I got that feeling from it when you were showing the finished product off, but I did.
Cinema is back
By the way, you can use this command to give you an invisible item frame to make placing items in your world more seamless (prime example: the farmer's stall)
/give @p minecraft:item_frame{EntityTag:{Invisible:1}}
So, based on your earlier interpretations and this rebuild, it looks like this was a trading outpost. Selling farm goods at first, but later incorporating a militaristic trade as well. Possibly rasing pigs as foodstuffs for those who lived there.
Why Pigs? O.o
Cows make so much more sense.
They feed on Wheat, and yield food and armor material.
@@Robin93k The beetroot seeds. The cows were being raised for leather more than anything based on the locations of where he found everything.
@@timwoods2852 Ooh... I honestly haven't done much with beet roots myself, so I didn't realise these can be used for pigs as well..
My Pigs are usually raised on carrots.
So, they may have had pigs as well, but i still think cows areore obvious.
A friend and I were watching the video together. You basically left Locus G alone since you weren't sure what to make of it. However, my friend and I were talking about it and would like to suggest that Locus G might have been a place to process animal remains above the blast furnace. Either by drying the skins or smoking food. That way the gaps would be a purposeful part of the building rather than a place where material had gone missing.
I call the ruins past inhabitants The Chinkasqakuna. It means The Lost Ones in the Quechua language. I've developed a whole theory about them including a possible cause for their disappearance and my main theory is they were displaced and wiped out by the now present Illagers.
does the theory include a whole empire/kingdoms that fell apart and are now nothing more than villager settlements because of the influence of the illagers? btw, i love the idea, and would love to see the whole theory
The candles fit pretty well in the top of the pots, so it's possible at least some of the pots could represent lamps of some kind, especially given how common sherds are across all structures.
Nice, though around 7:10 you talk about villages not having texturing, they do, the cobblestone is mixed with mossy cobblestone in the village buildings.
The brick structure with the criss crossed bricks might have been a rain catcher to store water. As the water depletes the cross bricks allow people to easily reach the lower levels to continue refilling their buckets.
Honestly its super cool how uou recreated eveyething!
Imagine if there was a village nearby this, and they considered these ruins to be of their ancestors. So you had stakeholders to talk to. What if they didnt want the site disturbed with an excavation but were ok with ground penetrating radar. Then you used an xray texture pack to simulate that, you take some screenshots and then have to interpret the site based on those xrayed screenshots.
Could the structure with the crisscrossing bricks be some sort of kiln?
Very cool! World one looks best and seems the most sound reconstruction imo.
I really like what you did with he tower. That was a great move.
It would be great to see you do the same thing with the ocean ruins.
Not sure why exactly but the way this place looks kind of gives Minoan vibes