The Lost City of Gerudo Desert (Tears of The Kingdom Theory) 

Is there a Lost City hiding in the Gerudo Desert? 🤔

In one of the memory cut scenes, the Gerudo sage mentions that the last free Gerudo settlement has fallen. That suggests there were several other than Kara Kara Bazaar and Gerudo Town.

Something to support this theory is that in the past, the gerudo population should have been as numerous as hylians or even greater numbers to wage wars in such a way as hinted in this game and others

If Nintendo had included a playable Princess Zelda where we get see more of Ancient Hyrule from the distant past and explore the in depth backstory of this version of in Tears of the Kingdom, perhaps there could’ve given us a grand opportunity to see what these lost Gerudo civilizations is like before turned into ruins.

I think it's pretty much a certainty that there was a significantly larger Gerudo population in the past. In one of the memories, it's reported that "the last free settlement" of Gerudo had fallen to Ganondorf. Meaning that there were multiple settlements at that time. It's possible that all the ruins we find in BotW/TotK are remnants of Ganondorf's invasion of the desert.

I always thought the ruins scattered about were from ancient cities. Plus in one of the dragon tear memories, one of that sages says "the last free village in gerudo desert has fallen." that implies that there were more towns.

thanks for this video. I'm so addicted to totk videos and most of zelda tubers just stopped releasing new videos

I'm surprised how you didn't mentioned the heroines statues, one of them has completely sink down due to the unstable sand, also i think gerudo town was made on top of an older one (probably the one ganondorf habited since in it has scripts of the lighting temple and the lighting temple probably was made to protect the secret stone after ganon was sealed) but with the time the town was getting burried by the sand so the gerudo decided to make another city on the roof of the original one thus explaining why they wanted to leave secret entrances to their history and also why the walls have the rocky appearance just as if once was a mountain or something like that

Great content!! IMO the Gerudo Region is the epitome of mystery, intrigue, deep lore, obfuscation, horror, otrosities, frustration and in some cases utter disgust. But strangely you can find: sand, rock. water, ice and Noble Pursuits all in one region. I believe, much like other deserts in our real beauty world, the deserts in botw and totk were once saturated with water and brimming with life. The presence of hydromelon and palm fruit, normally found in coastal villages, only confirms this theory. But....what happened? Climate change? Zonai Invasion?

This seems quite likely to me. If not one city, there wwere likely several city-states across the desert.

I've been wondering about the ruined settlements in the desert ever since I first went there in btow, sadly I never found enough information about their life to say anything conclusive or even coherent.

The lightning temple might be a reference to mysterious pyramid seen in OoT. The one that can only be seen when lightning lights up the horizon, Of course we now know that object was just a regular mountain, But if one were to headcanon there is indeed a pyramid out there, The easter egg is a nice wink to that.

You raise a good point Adam. I don't think this grand city you speculate about would have existed in the time of Ganondorf during the founding of Hyrule. I say that because the Ancient Sage reports in a memory to Rauru that the last "free Gerudo village" had fallen. As such, I'm inclined to say that there are many small Gerudo settlements across the desert, even beyond the boundary of the map, probably going out to the coast. From the sky, you can see that from Gerudo Canyon to the Lightning Temple, that is only about halfway out to the coast, so there is a lot of desert we don't get to explore. Perhaps in an even more ancient time, there was a grand city that you propose. It's possible that within the 10,000 or so years since Ganondorf's time, the Gerudo built such a thing. I think it is equally possible that they just built these smaller structures for whatever reason.

I just love your theory videos. You always make them so engaging and with exactly the right visuals and sound design. They are epic and mysterious but always with a sense of humor. Thanks for doing these. I enjoy them so much. 😊

In one of the cutscenes they talk about how the last free village in gerudo desert fell, I believe the desert used to be like central hyrule with many village dotted across the landscape

I remember while gliding high above the Gerudo Desert shortly before sunset, and noticing that the positions of the Lightning Temple, Gerudo Town, and the Kara Kara Bazaar seemed familiar. They reminded me a LOT of the the famed Great Pyramids of Giza. It made the mind wonder if Gerudo Town and the Bazaar were once similar structures to the Lightning Temple, with Gerudo Town being built from ruins, while the Bazaar was a completely forgotten ruin. Probably coincidence, but it was cool to think about.

There are so many buried buildings there indeed. Underground as well. Great vid and stay awesome ^^

What if the Ancient Hero WAS a Zonai-hybrid and thus an original schism between Hylians and Gerudo comes from dual claims to the Hyrulean throne?

I don't think just one big city, but many smaller cities. As many pointed out already, this is hinted at in one of the memories. Plus I think Ganondorf (before he became the demon king) would need a few more people (than we see in the present time) to actually wage war on Hyrule. And I think that would be sooooo interesting to see, because apparently not all Gerudo supported Ganondorf (the sage at least, plus the way they say that the last town has fallen, kinda implying that they stood their ground against him). So was Ganondorf actually the one to extremely diminish the number of his own people? Like the Gerudo were thriving before, but once Daddy G-Dorf went completely nuts, they turned against him and in the end, were almost destroyed by him, which let to the ruin of a majority of these towns...

I love seeing exciting new totk videos and theories. So many people talking about being tired of Tears of the Kingdom. While some might be, I tend to think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think the alternative is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the content creators were more excitedly making totk videos, less would think it is "tired," at the same time though the creators measure the interest in their videos by the view counts and engagement... anyway, I'm not tired, I love your videos, and I hope they never end.

Considering the Gorons had a massive city beneath Death Mountain in the era of Hyrule's founding, it's not hard to believe the Gerudo had something similar.

Hyrule Gamer: It’s on the verge of crackpot conspiracy theorist… Alex Jones as Zelda conspirist: THEY’RE TURNING THE FROX GAY!

I would love to see the ruins and landmarks outlined more clearly on a map of Gerudo Desert. Perhaps the shape of this lost city could be calculated. We also can’t underestimate the destruction caused by Vah Naboris during the Calamity

I think the Gerudo ruins reflect more how Egyptian, Aztec, Mayan and most recently the Derinkuyu and Gobekli tepe used to display their main structures. Most have found spread out ruins that don't seem to connect to anything they are just spread out. Some studies from the ancient Aztecs and Olmecs usually suggest they were constructions showing the political power of its time but when a new political power rose, those temples or whatever they were meant to be get abandoned and new projects are requested to build to show off their new political power. So most likely is, the ruins of the Gerudo, show the different Eras when the Gerudo used to be and moved around between the era of Rauru and Sonia until the BOTW timeline showing different stages of Gerudo political powers. Japan used to change the location of the castle every time a new Emperor was appointed, so this could be the same situation or maybe like you said, a sand like place shifts so often the Gerudo needed to relocate their main city every time and those ruins were the last remaining structures of ancient locations they inhabited.

the desert has always interested me. it’s so empty yet mysterious :)

In one of the geoglyphs the zora champion says "we've just got word that the last village in the gerudo desert has fallen" meaning that there were many gerudo people and villages they lived in but probably all got destroyed by Ganon's army.

Whoever was in charge of designing the Gerudo area of TOTK knocked it out of the park. That one region has almost everything great about this Zelda iteration but in concentrate form. There's all the mysterious areas and ruins. The mysteries themselves, such as the state of the city when you arrive. The cool temple. Intriguing lore. Creepy monsters. NPCs with their own interesting things going on. All the surprising things with the Yiga clan. And a genuinely new landscape not found in BOTW (not talking about caves).

Great video Adam! Gerudo Desert is always one of my favorite locales in any Zelda simply because of the mystery that it always seems to have. Something about secrets potentially being buried even further is super intriguing!

Thank goodness more theory videos!!

I believe it wasn't a massive city, but rather a series of villages of differing sizes. Lukely from different eras.

at some point, probably over 150 hours in, it suddenly hit me. "What if theres something below those sink holes?" So I went to the desert and jumped in... only to find a friggin DUNGEON. The desert is such an awesome location for a game like this. I really wish we could get a spinoff with the gerudo.

This is such a cool idea. Nice vid!

HYRULE GAMER IS THE BEST!!Theories are always fun and logical.I will be a fan of you as long as THE LEGEND OF ZELDA is in this world.

The shelter ruins under Gerudo Town immediately reminded me of the real world site of Gobekli Tepe, which was also underground and dates back thousands of years. While Nintendo is largely unconcerned with filling in missing bits of lore, they're at least still generous enough to give us a sandbox world to speculate upon. And not only that, but the location underground has that graveyard, which is wholly unique to them. It seems like the Gerudo region is the most rife with secrets and mysteries than anywhere else in Hyrule, at least in proportion to its size.

Thanks for somehow being one of the only Zelda tubers actually making videos consistently right now

Definitely checks out. Especially considering they did it with the desert region in Skyward Sword, which was highlighted by the time shift mechanic. And as others have pointed out that the memories in TotK imply a larger settlement. Also I find the number of ruins themselves plausible evidence.

This makes perfect sense to me. It's much more sensical to think that all of these ruins were a part of a mega city, than separately built structures with no relation to each other, probably at the time of Ganon before the war. I would love to see artist depiction of this city including all of the ruins.

I was thinking just today that one of the Zeldatubers should talk about some Gerudo Desert theories. There’s a lot to talk about here. 🙌 GG

I respect you for doing many lore videos about Tears of the Kingdom, a game I struggle see as canon at all due to many strange decisions from a lore standpoint.

I for sure have my own version of a noble pursuit on me already. Great theory! I feel like gerudo has a million different things a theory can be made on. Can't wait for more!

I like to believe that the Gerudo desert had many villages and settlements, and that what we know as gerudo town was once just the palace of Ganondorf. The remaining Gerudo, being a smaller group, moved into this palace after he is sealed

Yoo, now vid, let's go

It was mentioned in one of the memories that there was more then a few villages in gerudo desert. How many no idea all we can guess is that they were all killed by their then king

This theory makes sense, I definitely believe there is more to Gerudo desert and Gerudo town than what we see now. Another explanation as to why they spread so far across the desert could be the water supply. We can see at Gerudo Town and Kara Kara Bazaar that there are prominent water sources, it's possible that they migrated to be closer to those, or spent all of the water resources in other areas of the desert, prompting them to move around to find more.

To be honest, it makes a lot of sense because it always seemed weird to me that there was a group of people living out in a waste land. But pride and ancestry to the land would explain that

I thought a lot about the fact that the temple of lightning had a lot of resemblances to Ganon's pyramid in A link to the past, this leads me to think that perhaps it is a representation of an era where Ganon reigned as king over the Gerudo people from the top of his pyramid at a time when the Gerudo were more scattered in the desert

I like to imagine several spread out hamlets or villages in the desert with one or two large settlements where there're enough resources to support a large population

There's something so funny about a Zelda youtuber saying they "live life on the edge"

I wonder if this city was sunk before the Imprisoning War. Ganondorf's motivation to conquer Hyrule was due to him feeling like Hyrule was decadent and unworthy of its prosperity, and had no fighting spirit. Rauru rules an elegant palace and gardens while his cities are sunk by sand and age. It is also said he killed his own people to assert his domination, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were sunk intentionally due to his magic.

I think it’s very likely! We discover so many things in our real work out in the dessert, or jungles, even mountains. Have you heard of Göbeklitepe in Turkey? we’ve only uncovered about 5% of this massive “pre history” settlement. Great video!

I would expect some of these ruins and architecture would be like training grounds under harsh conditions. Just like you had a training grounds in Ocarina of Time, this is probably a different kind of training grounds built out in the desert at one point, but over time they eroded and decayed into ruin as their numbers would of most likely declined at some point, and the Imprisoning War, we don't actually get to see the actual war breakout in full after all, so perhaps a number of them had fallen in battle.

One more piece of evidence: the thronw room has a gaping open window behind it to the desert, which has always felt like an odd choice. Why would the Gerudo leader sit with their back to a desert where they could be exposed to assassins? It makes a lot more sense if you think that gerudo town was surrounded by a much larger city, and possibly even elevated much higher above the sand. Maybe Gerudo town as it is now is actually the spire of what was once a grand castle? The shelter under the town is very reminiscent of the passage from hyrule castle to lookout landing... idk this theory isn't very crackpot at all

Congrats on 150k 🥳🎉 Also what do you think of the Zelda movie?

I’m sooo curious about what the lighting temple is originally used for in the potentially ancient huge desert city?

It should be noted that sinkholes are often caused by groundwater moving, so the ruins under the sinkholes could have originally been near water sources on the surface in the ancient past.

It does feel like the entire desert is a continuous area of structures with some areas just more buried than others.

In one of the flashbacks it's reported that the last free village in the desert has fallen which certainly suggests the desert was a lot more populated in the past. What if all these ruins were the result of Ganondorf himself razing the desert and attacking his own people after becoming the demon king? As the origin point the Gerudo desert and it's various settlements would have seen the most damage kinda like how central Hyrule saw the most damage from the calamity. The reason Gerudo town looks so new might be because it's a rebuilt version of the original Gerudo capital. Makes me want to see what Hyrule Castle and Castle Town will look like when Hudson's done.

the ariters grounds was the name of a boss area in Twilight princess that was nothing but sand and a boss fight which could be a nod to it and if im not mistaken the temple you fight that boss in is in the desert so might be a reference to other games

I'm pretty sure you're right. Just judging by the real world, it seems that every so often, some ancient city is discovered below the surface. I would expect there to have been many more Gerudo in the past than we have evidence for.

Imagine if the gerudo town is just the palace level of a bigger city now sunk in the sand, with all the junk on the surface and some sink holes tmy theory doesnt feel farfecth

My favorite is the lost city of gorondia. It reminds me of a movie of ben 10, this bounty hunter based on diamond head when he sees his planet and he calls its name "petropia"

I mean just look into the depths of the area. There is a whole graveyard down there.

I love everything Gerudo. Thank you for this.

I always thought those were ruins from the settlements that fell to Ganondorf.

Consider: the state of that area of the map in Skyward Sword (for more in the environmental storytelling of the region)

It would make sense that Gerudo town would have been a much larger city... if we were thinking about real world cities. The massive structures would make you think that, however if we look at the rest of BotW/TotK the largest settlements only have a handful of houses, even Castle town with the massive castle structure only seemed to have a small amount of houses around it before the Calamity, its almost as though the world building team for Zelda games either doesn't want the worlds to feel very populated OR they simply don't want to design cities with large numbers of people in them even though they have massive structures nearby.

I do think your theory makes a fair bit of sense

I was so disappointed that the Lightning Temple wasn't just called the Arbiter's Grounds. They already had an amazing ruin that basically serves the same narrative purpose as the Lightning Temple. Why did we need it? If nothing else, at least we got our mysterious pyramid that was rumored in OoT.

I appreciate the fact you are continuing to make TotK content.

I think in one of the memories mentions multiple villages in the gerudo desert

Posting this comment before your theory because it made me think of something. It's not odd to me that you would have settlements in far flung reaches. It's how you maintain sovereignty over a larger area of a country. I live in Canada. Heck there is an island that we "fight" over with denmark where we leave a bottle of rye and our flag and they take it and leave a flag and schnapps that we then take. I'm interested to see why you think the Geurodo built in crazy places.

Also in the The Sages' Vow memory, the Water Sage says "we just received word that the last free village in Gerudo Desert has fallen [to the Demon King and his army]". So it's probably less that these villages were slowly forgotten and swallowed by the desert, and more that they were *decimated* and *forcibly evacuated,* like what happened with all the Hyrulean settlements that we see in Central Hyrule that were destroyed by the Calamity. We don't know exactly when the law of "no voe in Gerudo Town" was instated (it was present in the Heroines' time according to the stela we find at the end of the sidequest The Mysterious Eighth, which says they couldn't properly repay the Hylian voe who saved them due to this law), but I'm thinking that, after the villages of Gerudo Desert were destroyed and the Demon King sealed, the remaining Gerudo moved into the more centralized and fortified Gerudo Town, and from then on no more voe were allowed since the Demon King had been one

Wow I wished there would be more games in the world of hyrule without it being centred around link, Zelda or ganondorf. Like imagine playing a game as a gerudo in that ancient gerudo civilisation, or a zora during the great flood. I would love to see and experience more of the world and the universe from different perspectives and walks of life basically, I feel like it would be amazing in adding more depth to the interactions with each race if you’ve actually experienced some of the hardships and breakthroughs that theylived through. This video is basically my point for that. Going through the gerudo desert as link is one thing but I think it would be cool to actually experience it from the inside, this time. And I think they could do it in a way, I mean mekar and Medli were playable for a bit, that gave me a feel for what it was like to be them and made the world feel so much richer and deeper than when I was just link alone. And ofocurse there’s majoras mask giving a good taste of that. And I think it would solve the problem of the story getting very old, and the characters, It’s not that I hate link or Zelda but after 20 years of playing with mostly them in mind, I would love to also be in someone else’s shoes. Great video!!

I literally stopped what I was doing, got my Nintendo Switch Oled, went to Gerudo town, bought a noble pursuit, went to the light dragon to ride on her back, (my hangout spot.) and unpaused the video.

I hope all the theorist folks are working together on a new theory about Hylia and Zelda's separation with the new info we have from the statues in totk! Is that even the same Hylia which existed pre-SS?

Have you explored the depts underneath the desert? There is a cemetery. Probably a lot more too.

Out of curiosity, overlaying the desert with gerudo desert from oot do you think some of these ruins overlap with the spirit temple and the other gerudo village? Maybe some of them are old parts that were not shown in oot or even TP? And k don't mean the full wilds map. Just the desert portions overlapped and rotated around to look at placements?

Wasn’t one of the memory cutscenes (or some other one) mention about other gerudo settlements falling to ganondorf? Am I mis remembering that? 🤔 I think it was one of the ones after he stole the secret stone. There was a line in there that stuck out to me.

I don't know if I think it was ONE city spanning the whole desert. Probably something like we see other places in game and in the real world where it was several big cities and a number of smaller towns and villages

The reason the ruins aren't closer together could be that at one time the desert wasn't a desert. Like the Sahara desert was a lush forest thousands of years ago, gerudo desert could have been a place full of life before. The ability to get to each of the ruins would have been much easier so keeping it compact wasn't a big issue.

Well I know there is a lot of the arbitors grounds still buried as the arbitors grounds was massive

So anyone else remember that it was once a ocean in skyward so Atlantis now trapped in sand instead of the sea

I really liked this one. Great job my friend

This theory doesn't sound crackpot to me at all. Honestly, it seems very plausible.

I wish this could be tackled in game via DLC. 😢

Something you haven’t made a video about yet and I haven’t seen it anywhere on RU-vid but I think it’s a good guess Because I think that the temple of time on the great plateau is, was the original high rule castle

H.G, you had me at "crazy theory." To me, those are the best kind of theories for Zelda games. And you know what the best part of those kind of theories are? That they're usually right or partially, right. Keep up the great videos. I love your content.❤ P.S I have made a list of Zelda, Theory lore mystery and history videos for my personal viewing. And quite a few of your videos are on that list. This one will also be joining it. Again, love your content. Keep up the good work. I love adding your videos to my list of Zelda, mystery, history, theory, and lore.

A king needs a kingdom, and ganondorf is a king. Also we see in the memories of zelda a vast army of gorudo, that many couldn't have come from one town.

Such a very interestingly awesome video, I really loved and enjoyed it. Great job and well done, keep up the great work. I got a ton of inspiration for the Zelda inspired dark/weird sci-fi, science fantasy, paranormal horror and mystery interconnected short stories series that I’m working on writing. There’s a desert in my story’s world that I named the Ancient Neruda Sands and it’s located on the island continent known as Alessaeia-Hyrumund. The name of my story’s world is Tarmynea-EarthStone, which is a planet in VideoSpace. VideoSpace is a combination of space and cyberspace. There’s ancient ruins in the Ancient Neruda Sands known as the Covalent Confederacy Ruins, where the ancient precursor alien elder civilization ‘the Xon’ Null lived many long millennia’s ago.

Seems more than reasonable to me! I forget most of Skyward Sword but wasn't there a lot of advanced tech in the desert?

If Gerudo desert is anything lot our real world deserts there could be more hidden under the ever shifting sands. Example: the tombs that have been lost and then found many years later in Egypt due to sand shifting around and burying and unburying tombs, and other ruins.

I don't think this is out there at all, and am confused why you think so. It makes sense from what I can tell. Also, might be related, might not be, but there's also the Gerudo Graveyard in the Depths which I was thinking about earlier today. The Depths are Zonai heavy, but there's also of course the Fire Temple and Gorondia, in which Gorons once lived underground, but Gerudo probably would not, given they're basically human. But still, it's suggested they at least visited the Depths/underground, unless that Graveyard over time just kept sinking and sinking over thousands and thousands of years until it ended up there, but seeing as the graves are still mostly in tact, I doubt it. Much to think about.

It appears I haven’t seen _nearly_ as much as I thought I had.

what about Hyrule warrior age of calamity isn't there structures in tacked there like maybe the Devine beast crush there of push them in to the sand or made the sandstone crack and the upheaval made the sandstone cave in making the sink holes

I like this theory! I don't think it's too far fetched to think that there may have once stood a mega city, ot even that perhaps it was all settlements from previous Zelda games, and the Gerudo just moved arund the desert in search of more stable ground or oasis.

When TotK started to build hype, I feel like a lot of Zelda theories became sort of bland because they trying to stay away from the sort of crackpot kind of theorizing that made these videos like this interesting. It's videos like this that get me excited about the lore possibilities. This is one of the most interesting Zelda videos I've seen in a long time and I would love to see more of this sort of out there kind of thinking.

how is it that 10,000 years prior, the Lanayru region was where the desert is, and in the current games it's on the east side of the map and somehow where the Zora domain is? I think about this lots. If it wasn't for the huge regional difference, i would posit that the areas sticking out the the sand in totk/botw are the now covered areas of the explorable areas from the Skyward sword desert, but because it regionally doesn't match up, it all really makes no sense at all

Not so insane, imo. I love lost civilisations, be it in fiction or reality. The idea that there's one in the Gerudo Desert is amazing. :)

Awesome Video Bro!

day 2 of mentioning that on 6/6/2023 hyrule gamer made a video where, at 43.46, he spent 12 seconds simping about the ancient gerudo soldiers