There's a lost city of Birka underwater in the Blue Sea
While it's been over two years since Vegapunk confirmed what many of us already theorized- that most of the One Piece world lies far below the surface due to man-made flooding during the void century- we have yet to realize the full potential of this discovery to make sense of what we've already seen in the story. The biggest example of this? Birka, Shandora, and the winged 'moon people' as a whole
To elaborate- Jaya's right eye, "the skull's right eye", is clearly Shandora, but it's left eye was actually Birka- not the one that Enel came from in the sky, and not the "Birka" Enel finds depicted in the moon mural, but a third, still undiscovered 'Birka' in the blue sea. This 'Birka' housed all the winged races after they initially came to earth from the moon, and existed prior to the sky island civilizations
Many of these people then had to leave Jaya, and travel up to the sky, as a result of the flooding during the void century, which is why the Skypieans and white-sea Birkans are mostly found on sky islands. This is clearly not an ideal or native habitat for them, as they are very aware of the value of arable land and suffer from its scarcity. Also in this same line of reasoning, it would make little sense that the Skypieans or Birkans chose to live in the sky immediately after coming down from the moon, as they originally left the moon due to a lack of natural resources
Please stick with me here as the implications go far beyond Skypiea, and impact our understanding of everything from Alabasta to Wano.
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Our mystery begins in Jaya,
While it's clear to us now that the lost city of gold in the 'skull's right eye' that Noland referred to in his logbook is Shandora, the existence of ingots on the ocean floor is entirely unexplainable if we're just taking into account the post-void century Shandora we know.
- It's highly unlikely that the knock up stream- an upwards blast that launched the entirety of mainland Jaya into the sky-simply left behind a couple pieces of gold. Also, as far as we know, the separation of different parts of Upper Yard (like the Shandoran bell) only occurred after the land made contact with the sky island clouds and the giant beanstalk
- The existence of ingots among the gold completely flips our understanding of the situation if we keep in mind that the Shandians of Kalgara's age do not care about gold and are highly isolationist. Why would a people who don't value gold and don't trade with anyone use gold in order to trade with others?
With those two points in mind, it seems like Oda has always intended for this scene to not only build up the mystery surrounding the knock up stream, but also the void century flood and what possibly came before. This brings us to the next highly suspicious piece of evidence
Pay attention to what Noland's man on the left is wearing, and compare it to the Birkan ancestor (the one with the big wings) on the mural from the Enel cover story:
While it's unfair to say the two helmets are identical, it's a closer resemblance than the outfits that the suspected Shandian ancestor (on the right) and the suspected Skypiean ancestor (on the far left) have to their modern day counter parts.
This alone might not mean very much, but let's also consider that this is right after they find a map of Jaya and clarify that Shandora means "the skull's right eye". In that same map of course, is Jaya's missing left eye- why design an island with a perfectly shaped missing left eye, in an arc where the perfectly shaped hidden right eye was home to a lost city of gold?
Whether it's purely symbolic or not, it feels like an intentional question made for the reader to think on, as the right eye holds 'Shandora', a japanese word transliterated from "Chandra", the Sanskrit word for Moon and used for real life Moon deities. Importantly, in One Piece, the sun and the moon are naturally always paired together, but also never really opposed to one another.
Instead, Oda uses them as two halves meant to complete each other. This is most clearly spelled out for us in Toki's prophecy of the Moon and the Dawn,
And also helps to clarify why Shandora- a city of people who descend from the moon, whose real life etymology comes from the word for 'moon'- produced a culture of sun-worshippers.
This picture would only be complete if the left eye featured a parallel city that produced a culture of moon-worshippers..
Naturally, Enel, the Birkan, worships the moon. The theory checks out.
And of course, this also brings new meaning to Kalgara's seemingly benign statement that their ancestors were 'taken into heaven'. If this paired with the Shandian idea that we should 'hold the truth in our hearts and keep our mouths silent', and we keep in mind that this is void century lore to begin with (reminder the Tontattas weren't able to pass down VC lore, despite being able to recite oral tradition for what happened before the void century)- it becomes harder to actually believe that Kalgara is capable of giving us an entirely truthful, straightforward retelling of events here (regardless of his intention). As a result, it's possible that this vague idea of their ancestors 'going into heaven' was passed down by the Shandians as a cryptic means of saying that their ancestors (or no few number of them at least) literally ascended, physically, on Earth- perhaps to a sky island, during a war paired with a cataclysmic flooding event
Maybe we should have expected this all along, after all, central to Shinto mythology (no small influence for One Piece or Japanese culture at large) is the story of Izanagi giving birth to a sun god (Amaterasu) through his left eye and a moon god (Tsukuyomi) through his right eye.
So what does this actually mean for our understanding of Jaya, and the One Piece world as a whole?
Well, it certainly ties up some loose ends in the cultural transmission and trade that we visibly witness shaping the modern cultures of the One Piece world.
- There's always been questions about the relationship between Wano once being "the country of gold" and Shandora being 'the city of gold'. Shandora even holds the special (though largely unrecognized) status of being the only location in the entire One Piece world to feature the poneglyph language being used outside of actual poneglyphs
(both her dialogue and the appearance of this object seem to indicate it is decisively not a poneglyph, maybe more accurately described as a 'stella' of some sort).
It's clear that there was a close relationship between Wano and Shandora even outside of this theory. But notably, there's also a heavy influence of Shintoism and Japanese culture in general on Enel and his priests. It's genuinely the strongest most consistent example of Shinto/traditional Japanese influence on any featured One Piece island culture outside of Wano. Satori's yokai inspiration and explicit tale of genji reference, Enel's abode, his taiko drums, raijin and hachiman references, even Gedatsu's belt, etc. Shintoism and traditional Japanese culture is far from the sole influence on the Birkan priests, but it is extremely hard to ignore. Trade has always been a reliable means of cultural transmission, and I believe the strong evidence of trade between Jaya and Wano (evidenced in Shandora) goes hand in hand with Birka's culture being influenced by Wano in very visible and undeniable ways. Both proving what we've already suspected about Wano/Shandora ties, and validating the idea of a blue sea 'Birka' that eventually served as the origin point for the white-sea 'Birka'.
- The existence of the eastern Dragon in the Alubarna palace, and Gedatsu's cover story.
To start with the latter- Gedatsu falls down to the blue sea directly from Skypiea and ends up connecting the island he lands on directly to Alabasta through tunnels. This by itself means nothing, as regardless of any blue sea 'Birka', Skypiea just happens to be near Alabasta, it's inherent to the geography. But even for early One Piece this scenario is absurd, and really begs the question "why". Why spend so much time on a cover story connecting two vital story arcs that he'll later return to for lore related reasons several times over the following decades if it has nothing to do with the lore? Even then, I was willing to excuse it, after all Oda is genuinely unpredictable to a degree that has frustrated all of us at one point or another, and I refuse to be driven mad because of one man's propensity for unrestrained silliness.
But then I noticed that Alabasta's connection to the winged races seemingly goes beyond this-
both Pell's eye markings and the appearance of the eastern dragon fit very neatly in the context of the winged peoples we see depicted on the moon mural and the Birkans we see in Skypiea. It's even possible that there was contact over land between Jaya;s winged peoples and Alabasta prior to the flood, given how close the two islands are.
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There's more implications downstream of this but that's about all I could think to fit in a single thread for now. My hope is that the points raised here are at least thought provoking enough for people to consider looking back on the island of Jaya and the city of Shandora for an even deeper inspection with the flooding in mind, even if they might disagree on some of my own conclusions
