The Greatest Poneglyph Video Ever Made

this Justin these symbols featured all over the poneglyphs may have a direct tie to the sun god Nika and I figured it out by learning how to read them not only that but I can tell you how this massive ancient probably salty wall of text is meant to be read as well but hold on I'm jumping the gun a bit here let's start with something we can both probably agree on a chiro Oda is the type of author to code major bits of foreshadowing into the most random places ever oh yeah this jimbei guy they talk about in baratier I wonder if he'll ever permanently join the main cast of characters 600 chapters down the road this one random volume cover yeah that'll definitely be important later how about this tattoo in the foxy Arc how about chapter one you know the whole hockey foreshadowing thing what about the joy boy devil fruit foreshadowing thing see what I mean regardless of how far ahead you think Oda actually planned I'd say he makes it clear time and time again that there is generally a serious degree of planning involved in the writing of One Piece he is a man on a mission he's a guy who takes foreshadowing World building subtlety and literary sleight of hand very seriously and so I couldn't help but ask myself if he's hiding stuff in plain sight like this what could he be hiding away beneath the veil of obscurity the poneoglyphs are one of the most important elements in the entirety of one piece but for us and for a majority of characters in the story they might as well say this gorb Ed foreign despite them containing all the answers and despite them being right there in front of us multiple times there's no information we can possibly extract from them on our own without Robin or Odin's help or is there is it possible that Oda actually coded meaning into this fake writing system is it really that crazy to assume when it comes to a pivotal element in his thousand plus chapter epic that he didn't just cover these blocks in random I don't think so maybe we can learn some stuff on our own maybe we don't need their help maybe with the right amount of context and a cursory knowledge on a completely foreign writing system we can translate the poneglyphs all by ourselves [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you consider yourself to be good at reading really okay try reading this out loud yep I like to eat pizza nice work now read this take your time you might look at this and think this is the final draft of the Tokyo Revengers ending or maybe the scribblings of a toddler but in fact my friends you are looking at the written musings of an ancient intellectual World spanning Civilization with technology far beyond our own comprehension Pony glyphs are The Guiding Light in the story of One Piece pushing our protagonists little by little deeper into uncovering the greater Mysteries of the world what is the one piece where is laughtail why haven't you subscribed yet all good questions and all things we can find out from these stone blocks if only we could just learn how to read it's crazy to think that on more than one occasion there have been massive spoilers probably sitting right there in front of us spoilers that we'd never realistically be able to understand and the only barrier shielding our Virgin Eyes is this cryptic seemingly nonsensical language which got me thinking How Deeply did Oda think this stuff through we know he's a pretty thorough guy when it comes to certain Design Elements and we know he is quite a deliberate writer almost everything he writes has some purpose or intention behind it is it possible that Oda actually created a language to some degree one with some cohesion or logic to it or at least certain visual patterns that may serve the purpose of communication even if only a little bit now a lot of you may reflexively say no to such an idea it would be absurd to expect an entire written language to come out of oda's work right and to that I kind of have to disagree not entirely you'll see what I mean but it wouldn't be the first time a language has been created exclusively for a work of fiction one of the many reasons Lord of the Rings and Tolkien its author are so famous is because Tolkien created multiple fictional languages just for his story but the cool part is that they are actually functional you can actually go learn them right now if you wanted to this includes languages like quenya and cindaran which Tolkien crafted based on real world languages like Finnish and Welsh Mark oakrin created Klingon an alien language from Star Trek complete with its own alphabet vocabulary and grammatical structure people have adapted the entirety of Shakespeare is Hamlet into Klingon if that puts into perspective how real and learnable this language is Game of Thrones featured its own set of fictional languages like draki and High Valyrian Avatar did the same with the navi in their language the point I'm trying to make here guys is that people stop at nothing when it comes to World building in fiction and Oda as we already know is one of the kings of World building so while maybe not every bit of writing on the pony glyphs is a cohesive sentence or has cohesive grammatical structure to it that we can actually learn and follow along with I wouldn't put it past the man to have created a language with at least a proper consistent visual structure and a real world influence maybe with a couple rules built in and if it has that consistency and if it's based on a real language then maybe we can draw enough parallels to decipher even just a little bit about how these babies tick is there a logic behind these drawings did Oda really create a language here the first step to reading these things is to find out the answer to that burning question which is kind of tough to do when this looks like cthulhu's birth certificate so where do we begin well first we need to clearly establish what I'm trying to prove I'm trying to prove that whatever's written on the poneoglyphs is at least semi-readable or semi-functional what I mean is that not all but at least some of the symbols we see here are actually meant to represent something that if we knew what they symbolized we may be able to extract meaning from this text no matter how small okay well what criteria should a proper at least semi-functional language meet are there anything like me a semi-functional human this is in my unprofessional uneducated opinion but here you go witness the dunning-kruger effect in full force number one visual consistency every time we see a poneoglyph the symbols written on them should be the same or very comparable this means we should be seeing repeating symbols or patterns regardless of which page we look at number two grammatical structure there need to be rules on how this text must be read and written for example when we see Robin or anyone else interact with the pornoglyphs from which direction do they appear to start reading whatever the ants answer to this is it must be consistent across the story number three translatable finally we need at least one line of dialogue written in poneoglyph to be directly translated for us word for word which we can then use as a way to extract meaning from or compare the individual symbols that make up that translation and all of this would be a million times more difficult to accomplish if Oda created this language in a vacuum without any outside influence but he most definitely didn't so number four there should be at least one other real language from which we can confidently assume Oda has taken inspiration from just like all the other linguists and authors we mentioned before it helps to know then that this hypothetical real language does exist and with greater connections than you may at first realize the same civilization that created this language is also presumably the one responsible for harnessing a power that inadvertently helps you achieve your desires I wish I could be more like this or more like that some people out there want to become their spirit animal some people just want to become not a virgin which sounds a lot like the selling point of the Sims and that makes simlish the fictional language of that game a lot more suspect yeah I'm on to you Oda I'm not going to be surprised when people start reading the pony glyphs in the anime and sound like maybe the people of the one-piece world were just a bunch of Sims living Little Sim lives in their own little simtopia and they carried on for years riding on rocks with their dumb sounding language and peace that is until the mayor of SimCity decided to drop a tornado on top of their house and up everything but that's too easy of an answer too perfect you might say there must be something else another language much more obviously connected to the origins of the pony glyphs we need to establish a blueprint for the language that will point us in the right direction let's start with what we know what the poneglyphs are and where their conceptual Origins actually lie the poneglyphs are a type of Steely found across the one-piece world what is a Steely an ancient stone or wooden Monument often predominantly featuring text often carved into it there are plenty examples to be found out there coming from Egypt Babylon Greece and more they're even in our own backyard if you happen to live outside of a cemetery our modern day tombstones are actually considered a type of Steely and so real world steelies take on many different forms and feature various languages and serve many different purposes but in one piece the pontagraphs are unique because they share one language and one appearance no matter where they're found in the world their presence is shared across all cultures this is going to be important the name poneoglyph comes from a combination of words in Latin the root word of pone meaning to put and glyph meaning writing or carving in other words pone a glyph can be interpreted as placeable writing this naming scheme as a whole is clearly in reference to the Egyptian hieroglyphs which were similarly carved and painted onto Stone in ancient times and for a while were a complete mystery to us interestingly the first place we ever encounter and learn about poneoglyphs in one piece is in oda's very own version of Egypt so the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt are undoubtedly a major inspiration behind the pornographs of the ancient Kingdom but if we really want to get specific the poneglyphs likely get their appearance from a mix of influences which also include cuneiform the earliest known form of writing I think in terms of visuals and because this is the oldest form of writing on record the inspiration is clear I also think it's important that cuneiform was a writing system that worked across multiple languages and cultures using the same carvings you could write things in multiple languages this might be an influencing Factor on the universal nature of the poneglyph writings another major influence is likely the Rosetta Stone which was a large ancient stone featuring a decree written almost identically in three languages it almost has that poneoglyph air to it when you look at it now of those three languages one of them was ancient Greek and the other was what do you know Egyptian hieroglyphs since they were the same decree across all three translations and we already knew how to read Greek the Greek version was used to decipher the Egyptian one and thus this big block was the key to figuring out how to read this previously unconquerable language and the Rosetta Stone became a worldwide symbol of unlocking greater knowledge or understanding in the same vein the poneglyphs are a text that can be used to decipher and unlock the secrets of the Void Century so it stands to reason that these influences all played a significant part in oda's designing of the poneoglyphs the hieroglyphs and the Rosetta Stone they're featured on especially we'll get into more specifics in a bit but in some cases Oda may have straight up borrowed symbolism Straight From the Source it's one thing to have an influence but it could easily stop there if he wanted it to if he was feeling lazy one day he could have just written random gibberish all over these pages so now that we have an inspiration pinned down the first criteria for us to pit these things against is visual consistency do these symbols look the same now as they did back then are they drawn the same way do they look the same between panels did they age like a fine wine or did they have that awkward in-between phase where they bought their clothes at Hot Topic and thought L from Death Note was cool and relatable no just me well forget you heard anything now before certain objections get raised I have to point out some stuff first off I'm not using the anime as a reference for any of these the anime change just all the time with the pony glyphs and copy paste the same text between them to save on drawing the new ones they do not line up with the manga at all in any way shape or form so I'm only going with what Oda Drew explicitly which as far as I can tell is unique and different with every pony glyph it's also important to note that these carvings are drawn differently from a distance and when they're in lower resolution whether we're looking at the beginning examples in alabasta or the more current examples in wano Oda draws these symbols in an ultra simplified manner when viewed from far away when it's too small to make out he just seems to do whatever the hell he wants and I can't blame him no one is going to be attempting to read these especially at that size unless you're a desperate YouTuber with too much time on your hands he did sneak a panda man in there one time so maybe he does want us looking at these things more closely it's hard to tell anyway unfortunately the most recent sightings of poneglyphs in the story are all seen from a distance and are difficult to actually read with that being said we have a couple clearer looks at the poneglyph writings as recent as whole cake Island and when compared with the close-up we first get back in alabasta the writing looks to be the same you see the same symbols same line patterns written in very comparable ways and so on and trust me I know I've gotten pretty intimate with these symbols over the course of making this video I traced every one of the letters on this Panic with render if you were wondering why they look like anyway the structure of the writing seemed to be nearly identical across the board with only a minor difference I'll explain later comparing those same symbols with the ones we see in Sky Pia and his Lobby Fishman Island and so we still appear to have visual consistency so far it checks out but how can I truly tell that's because there are notable patterns in their design that keep making an appearance regardless of which example we look at let's talk about a few of them this circle with a DOT or smaller Circle in the center appears all over each and every one of the pony glyphs this symbol which I've come to dub as a serpent or the kashigami whatever you like more it looks kind of like an upright snake with a little eye there and is usually seen facing the left it seems to have a couple variations in shape too then there are these dots which outside of the aforementioned symbols can be found all over the place in groups of two or three these may be part of a greater symbol I mean they could be punctuation they could be word or phrase dividers they could be used as part of a number system there's a lot of potential with these I've noticed that it's not uncommon to see two horizontal dots attached to either the top or bottom of the more commonly seen circle symbol there are some other less common and more complicated symbols that make repeat appearances such as this one that looks like what you get if tenor clefts had an awkward cousin it makes more than one appearance in the story as well as this backwards D bracket looking thing this one along with all the other symbols mentioned make more than one appearance across various Pony glyphs at various points in the story over Decades of one piece's publication and yet they are consistent the symbols repeat in some cases there are very similarly framed panels featuring entire blocks of symbols with striking similarities what does all this mean does it mean that Oda actually created an entire alphabet here no I don't think so I'll stop you right there I don't think you could actually read these lines of text to create create full sentences and if someone manages to figure it out by all means I welcome it but for now my answer is no why well for one thing we don't know what it actually sounds like to pronounce any of these symbols we don't know where one symbol ends and where another begins sadly many of these lines and shapes are probably meaningless however I believe that Oda has created intentional visual patterns in the writing that make it identifiable it has consistent traits that you could look at and still confidently say yep those are pomegraph letters and while Oda probably doesn't expect anyone to pay attention to the more complicated shapes like these when it comes to shapes that overtly keep making appearances again and again like this circle here I think there is some additional meaning to be found time to introduce a really interesting fact about this symbol in ancient Egypt one of the main Gods they devoted themselves to was RA the sun god this right here is an actual symbol in Egyptian hieroglyphs and it appears a lot in said hieroglyphs because it is directly tied to their Sun God in fact this is the hieroglyph for sun the sun disk is an image that shows up quite a lot in the Rosetta Stone for example here here and here and here and here and here and it also has associations with another glyph the upright Cobra and all of its variants also known as Urias which is usually associated with the Sun God and was symbolic of royalty and godliness is it just coincidence that the two most common easily identifiable visual patterns we see on the poneglyphs are these things is a coincidence that the shandians who guarded their own poneglyph worshiped and sacrificed people to a giant snake for the sake of their own Sun God and that's only scratching the surface of this omnipresent symbolism we see in one piece as a whole it's not like the poneoglyphs were inspired by Italian or Russian there aren't other languages or writing systems out there with direct connections to the naming and theming and history of the poneglyphs who also share direct visual parallels besides the real hieroglyphs and out of all the symbols of the roughly 1000 different Egyptian hieroglyphic science catalog the ones with the greatest visual similarity to the pandaglyph writings are the symbols with direct affiliations to the Egyptian sun god symbols which were directly introduced to us in a literal Egyptian style tomb not quite sold yet well what if I told you that these same Pony glyph writings were not only found on the Pony gifts themselves but on the walls of the royal tomb in alabasta this writing is a direct part of alabasta's History written across the very walls of their catacombs just like real hieroglyphs and pictograms were this either means that alabasta has deep inlore ties with this language or that Oda originally intended for the ponoglyphs to be an alabasta specific thing which could make sense because you know he didn't always plan for the story to be as long as it currently is what's cool is that there's even more to how this works because if poneglyphs are anything like hieroglyphs then we can actually infer a lot about how they are meant to be read hieroglyphs were written in blocks called quadrates which were invisible squares that all the symbols were divided and contained to kind of like how when you write you almost picture a Ledge you're in your head to keep your sentences straight well they did the same thing and it was with boxes called quadrates and you were meant to read the symbols contained to each quadrate in other words hieroglyphs are red one square at a time oftentimes many symbols would come together within one square or one quadrate to produce a new phrase or New Concept well when we look at the poneglyphs what do we see a lot of weird symbols combine together and those groups of symbols are divided into individual squares this is not by accident guys what's cooler is that when you combine certain hieroglyphs with others in their respective squares the symbols can take on new meaning this sun hieroglyph can be combined with others to delineate measurements of time in this case instead of sun it means one day this means in an instant put a couple more lines beneath it and the symbol changes completely to mean sunshine and now it should make more sense why you see so many of these things in their writing between their constant worship and reverence of their Sun God or the fact that they lived in a desert with nothing but beating sunlight considering steelies were created to catalog historical events and thus involved a lot of dates and times being recorded this symbol should be all over the place now ask yourself don't all those properties I just listed off sound a lot like things the ancient Kingdom have a connection to either symbolically or conceptually we cannot find many if any examples of full repeating pornograph squares but we do have the smaller parts repeating a lot in different combinations and so I think we can safely assume that ponographs are written and read in quadrate form just like the hieroglyphs were these squares of text are not individual words but entire phrases made up of a collection of smaller symbols maybe that's what we're seeing here with this possible sun disk or this bracket thing commonly being attached to or surrounded by other symbols let's assume this is correct for now you read these one square at a time cool but which Square do you start with exactly and after you finish that one which direction do you go next left right up down I got an answer for that too hieroglyphs can be read both vertically and horizontally depending on the situation when it's vertical you read them from top to bottom but when you have the option to read them horizontally how do you know which direction to start from it's whichever direction the symbols are facing so if the snake or falcon or human hieroglyphs are facing the left then you start reading from left to right in the case of the pony glyphs with some admitted exceptions in a couple spots almost all the serpent-like symbols we spoke about are facing the left meaning you would start reading from the left okay let's test to see if this is correct do we get to see where Robin starts reading from in the manga possibly oda's made it intentionally vague the first time she ever encounters a poneoglyph in front of us in alabasta we see her position towards the left and looking towards what looks like the left side of the poneglyph when Robin is reading the pawn and Griffin Fishman Island the panel places focus on the top left corner of the poneglyph which in this case would be its presumed starting point and that's about it really if it helps the anime also chooses to pan from left to right when Robin reads raja's message in Sky Pia let's go deeper into the grammar and in a lot of the pony glyphs we see the quadrates are written in a grid-like fashion with uniform spacing between the squares a question that arises from this is how do I know to read them in rows instead of columns how do I know to start from left to right instead of top to bottom well I have two reasons actually in the recent appearances of the pony glyphs and specifically in the case of big mom's Pony glyph rubbings there seemed to be more notable gaps in between some of the squares that almost look like how you would separate words or sentences because of this they are not uniformed vertically and thus likely not meant to be read from top to bottom because the columns would be misaligned all the early incarnations of the pony glyphs seem to feature more grid-like text this may no longer be the case in future appearances and I don't know if this is something that Oda has made the conscious decision to do but this is the only change I've noticed in how the pony glyphs have been presented between then and now maybe the letters have their own training Arc over the time skip to make themselves more comprehensible the other reason I'm convinced that they are red and rows and not columns is because Roger conveniently left us a sentence written in the same language not featured on the Square Face of a poneoglyph and it was separated into three horizontal lines of varying length implying they are written across rather than down and while our discussion has us here the last thing I want to nitpick is this exact sentence it's the only sentence of poneglyph we have a full translation of I hereby guide this document to its end pirate Goldie Roger going by the logic we've set up so far these first two longer lines should make up the actual sentence and then it reasonably follows that this last shorter line on the bottom should be the place where Roger's name is signed so technically we know mostly how to write pirate gold D Roger in poneoglyph it's right there you can do it right now if you wanted to I wouldn't be able to tell you which part is which but if this symbol is supposed to be the Sun and considering all the recurring symbolism in one piece I'm not surprised to see this bad boy smack in the middle of this line around the spot where the D should be so let's take a look back at our criteria and compare what we have here with what we were looking for the poneoglyph writings are a language with a very real connection to a real world ancient writing system and the pony glyphs have logical connections to that system in both symbology and structure conceptually they are almost identical and both societies they are attached to place great emphasis on the same type of imagery and we can use this information to infer how the pornographs work Oda clearly designed these with a consistent rule set like hieroglyphs poneglyphs are probably written in groups of small symbols and are meant to be read by square based on what we've seen in both we can infer that poneglyphs are probably red starting from left to right then top to bottom like cuneiform it is probably a writing system that was Universal to and used by many cultures in the one piece world and like cuneiform it may also be the first writing system in the one-piece world so as of this video we established that these writings and the way Oda repeatedly draws them have remained consistent over hundreds and hundreds of chapters we've been able to establish a potentially loose reading and writing structure for these things and we may also have the meaning of a bunch of recurring symbols pinned down and we were able to connect at least one of these symbols to a directly translated line of panic with text all in relation to the already established long-running themes of the story so did it meet our previously established criteria in a way yes does that mean there's an actual alphabet to be found here does that mean that someday we'll be able to read these things no probably not I don't think he'll ever come out and explain every little part of this language hell I doubt he's even thought it through that far but that doesn't mean that every single symbol here is nonsensical there is a Rhyme or Reason going on behind this design there are patterns that Oda makes sure to maintain he does his best to be consistent when he's writing these things and I guarantee you Oda did not just decide these symbols on a whim like everything else he writes there is research and preparation that goes into it and I believe that his research into ancient Egypt directly led to me and you having this conversation today I could easily see Robin at some point down the road point directly to a sign on the pony glyphs and tell us what it means and if she does I'd bet money it's either going to be this symbol or this symbol because Oda is just that type of writer at this point would it really surprise you I'll let you guys come to your own conclusions about if and what Oda has hidden among these symbols and if you have any ideas of your own let me know in the comments below but for now I hope you guys have a good rest of your day or night wherever you are I gotta go and get scolded by my wife because I just spent the past 72 hours learning how to read a dead language instead of practicing my Japanese hahaha [Music]

Channel: The Hidden Island

Views: 75,292

Keywords: PONEGLYPH 101, Poneglyphs, Ponegliff, Heiroglyphs, The Hidden Island, One Piece, One Piece Theory, Megatheory, Mega Theory, Reading the Poneglyphs, hidden island, hidden island one piece, OP theory, OP 1072, Clone Theory, One Piece Clone, Stussy, Road Poneglyph, Egyptians, Ancient Kingdom, Best theory, Library of Ohara, Clover, Poneglyph writing, Crazy theory, Anime, Manga, Ohara, Grand Line, Sun God Nika, Joyboy, Joy Boy, Funny one piece video, ODA, Secretly, BEST KEPT SECRET

Id: OqLv4XvRB9I

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023