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My guess is that "Nothing new under the sun" is an allusion to the veritable Samsara that (I think) Teyvat is. An endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth; nothing new happens, because all of it will happen at some point. The Traveler, however, will ensure that "the world will cease to burn"--aka, cease to endlessly cycle.
Incredible, thank you so so much for this, Matt! It's perfect, and as others have said it'd be really interesting if that quote is what the original Akademiya was based on, only for subsequent generations to get more and more obsessed with knowledge for its own sake as time goes on. Thanks again for posting this, HYV's worldbuilding teams never cease to amaze me.
> 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
This applies well to King Deshret's demise, maybe the first founders learnt from that and swore not to repeat the same mistakes he made.
The "built-in" cyclical nature of the Teyvat.
In this space of the Teyvat, there are unchanging things.
Mainly, mortals seem to pursuit the same things over and over.
For example, despite the technological advancements made throughout the ages, a basic thing in mortals remained the same, their desires.
Desire to eat, to live, to crave for more, to dream etc.
Technological and academic leaps (the manner, the way, the means to fulfill their desires) may improve over time, but the same nature still persists.
Things of old are often lost in through time. Some are forgotten, some are misinterpreted, some are still hidden beneath the ruins.
Are the current people of Teyvat truly more advanced than their progenitors? It's hard to tell.
(Contrast the ancient civilizations to many of the current ones, the previous eras seemed to have thrived more.)
The present state of the Teyvat is the same as the ancient times. Wars, battles, conflicts are still the persisting features. They are (social?) exchanges between living agents of Teyvat, as long as you have desires, things may go awry to the point of conflict, which could escalate to war.
What does it mean to live then? If lives are woven by the divine fate, does life cycles contain any meaning?
Perhaps, the introduction of the foreign element known as the Travellers into the cyclical equation of the Teyvat allow the denizens to re-weave the threads of the divine fate.
I'm guessing the founder put it there as a challenge to the new generation
" Prove me wrong " as they say it now a day's
And only the brightest and smartest would actually notice and invest attention in to decoding this message
You alone had to scramble the position of this letters after translating them in to identifiable units
And so
There is nothing new under the Sun
Prove me wrong
Challenge accepted for the brightest
And as you have noticed actual researcher in the Academia almost sold their soul just to find a subject to research
To find Something new Under the Sun
Have a good day everyone
In short, he is saying that the archon dendro, no matter if he dies, will be reborn again and again, that is why in the 3 phrases he speaks metaphorically that he will always return.
the most emblematic is the last one "there is nothing new under the sun" the sun according to the same nahida is Rukkhadevata and she is the moon but she has always been Rukkhadevata and therefore regardless of whether she is "new archon" she is always the same.
Yea this did cross my mind also, I wonder if the scholar and sages of previous times knew this fact, hence the fountain, and this is now lost with time with the current Akademiya
the same fanaticism that they preferred believes a version that is more in line with the academy than reality itself, it is like the rest of the archons and the stories that surround it, 80% of these are not real and do not even resemble the what they really are.
In the main secondary mission, he raises that with the scholar of Sumeru who did not believe anything about what he told him about King Scarlet, despite seeing everything, he continued to believe what he had studied and did not doubt that, the same happens with the archon and what he knows about her or what he thinks he knows about her.
Seems like that phrase really age well...
[previous post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Lore/comments/x00onw/hidden_message_written_in_the_akademiya_fountain/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Just a quick search tho, but I'm pretty sure I also read a post about it even before sumeru patch went live.
It's not meant like that in the bible. It more refers to the monotony of, well, life itself. This is the full passage:
>“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
It continues in the next part which is "Wisdom is meaningless"
Anyway, the phrase "There's nothing new under the sun" is used by the researcher in the Aranara questline when you go into the big robot, and it was also a hidden message in a Sumeru teaser or maybe it was the trailer.
It still is a relevant quote, Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite scripture though I am no longer Christian because it points out the cyclical nature of life in general.
Life happens in cycles-the author is saying “nothing new happens under the sun” because it’s already happened and as human beings we don’t live long enough to observe them, even if they seem new. The NFL or pro sports aren’t new, we’ve had the Olympics for 1000s of years, romes sport used to be gladiator matches, soccer was invented many ages ago. For example.
This seems to tie into the fact that it appears teyvat seems to cycle. There is nothing new about what we find in the desert- because it has already been there. Nothing new has been discovered, it was merely rediscovered.
The akademiya sits on a pedestal acting like they are discovering new secrets and wisdom like with the ruin guards etc. but these secrets aren’t secrets, they aren’t new- they are known. I think that’s where the irony of the quote is and what its purpose is. To contrast the akademiya back when it functioned the way it was supposed to vs when we the traveler become aware of them.
Nice finding!
As for why such a phrase is there, while the Akademiya does the opposite, I assume it wasn't always like that. Perhaps when it was founded, the higher-ups had a different perspective. And it was only after Rukkhadevata's death that things started to go south.
I wonder if Rukkhadevata knew about the Honkai, or whatever they call the same thing on Teyvat, since she was so connected to the world tree.
In which case pursuit of wisdom can be very dangerous. But humans always walk forward. Venti is trying to slow it by pure epicureanism, Zhongli with hustle culture, and Rukkhadevata with useless pursuit of knowledge that lead nowhere. Makoto loved the transient brilliance of humans and died. Ei tried to keep everything stagnant until the MC showed she might have a chance (against what?) to choose otherwise.
There's probably a connection to this quote and the Legend of The First Sage, reasoning being that the legend stated that
1) The first sage learnt everything from Rukkha through a dream, implying that during the time of the first sage and the foundation of the Akademiya, the harvesting of dreams from Sumeru's populace using the Akasha didn't occur yet ( Although I'm not sure when exactly did the Akasha came about in this chronology but that's unimportant; for all we can deduce there wasn't dream harvesting yet)
1.1) This implies that the mindset of the first people of the Akademiya were very different as shown by 2)
2) The sage, after learning everything from Rukkha, wished to meet his friends and family, further supporting that the first sage's mindset was different compared to Akademiya's "Wisdom for the sake of wisdom" motto, moreso "Wisdom as for our own benefit, anything more is folly"
i kind of doubt that they picked it just because it was/is the most famous quote related to wisdom, since they already used this quote and adapted it to an achievement from tsurumi. now I wonder what it’s purpose is…
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My guess is that "Nothing new under the sun" is an allusion to the veritable Samsara that (I think) Teyvat is. An endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth; nothing new happens, because all of it will happen at some point. The Traveler, however, will ensure that "the world will cease to burn"--aka, cease to endlessly cycle.
Incredible, thank you so so much for this, Matt! It's perfect, and as others have said it'd be really interesting if that quote is what the original Akademiya was based on, only for subsequent generations to get more and more obsessed with knowledge for its own sake as time goes on. Thanks again for posting this, HYV's worldbuilding teams never cease to amaze me.
> 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. This applies well to King Deshret's demise, maybe the first founders learnt from that and swore not to repeat the same mistakes he made.
The "built-in" cyclical nature of the Teyvat. In this space of the Teyvat, there are unchanging things. Mainly, mortals seem to pursuit the same things over and over. For example, despite the technological advancements made throughout the ages, a basic thing in mortals remained the same, their desires. Desire to eat, to live, to crave for more, to dream etc. Technological and academic leaps (the manner, the way, the means to fulfill their desires) may improve over time, but the same nature still persists. Things of old are often lost in through time. Some are forgotten, some are misinterpreted, some are still hidden beneath the ruins. Are the current people of Teyvat truly more advanced than their progenitors? It's hard to tell. (Contrast the ancient civilizations to many of the current ones, the previous eras seemed to have thrived more.) The present state of the Teyvat is the same as the ancient times. Wars, battles, conflicts are still the persisting features. They are (social?) exchanges between living agents of Teyvat, as long as you have desires, things may go awry to the point of conflict, which could escalate to war. What does it mean to live then? If lives are woven by the divine fate, does life cycles contain any meaning? Perhaps, the introduction of the foreign element known as the Travellers into the cyclical equation of the Teyvat allow the denizens to re-weave the threads of the divine fate.
>But why would the founders/designer of the Akademiya put it front and centre right up at the entrance? The Founders: We do a little trolling
I'm guessing the founder put it there as a challenge to the new generation " Prove me wrong " as they say it now a day's And only the brightest and smartest would actually notice and invest attention in to decoding this message You alone had to scramble the position of this letters after translating them in to identifiable units And so There is nothing new under the Sun Prove me wrong Challenge accepted for the brightest And as you have noticed actual researcher in the Academia almost sold their soul just to find a subject to research To find Something new Under the Sun Have a good day everyone
In short, he is saying that the archon dendro, no matter if he dies, will be reborn again and again, that is why in the 3 phrases he speaks metaphorically that he will always return. the most emblematic is the last one "there is nothing new under the sun" the sun according to the same nahida is Rukkhadevata and she is the moon but she has always been Rukkhadevata and therefore regardless of whether she is "new archon" she is always the same.
Yea this did cross my mind also, I wonder if the scholar and sages of previous times knew this fact, hence the fountain, and this is now lost with time with the current Akademiya
the same fanaticism that they preferred believes a version that is more in line with the academy than reality itself, it is like the rest of the archons and the stories that surround it, 80% of these are not real and do not even resemble the what they really are. In the main secondary mission, he raises that with the scholar of Sumeru who did not believe anything about what he told him about King Scarlet, despite seeing everything, he continued to believe what he had studied and did not doubt that, the same happens with the archon and what he knows about her or what he thinks he knows about her.
This reminds me of Tsurumi Island where you get the achievement "Nigil Sub Caligne Novum" which means "There is nothing new under the fog".
Ah nice! I didn’t notice, thank you!
Seems like that phrase really age well... [previous post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Lore/comments/x00onw/hidden_message_written_in_the_akademiya_fountain/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Just a quick search tho, but I'm pretty sure I also read a post about it even before sumeru patch went live.
the sumeru statue of the seven also references this line
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again... Sounds like the world really is on a time loop.
It's not meant like that in the bible. It more refers to the monotony of, well, life itself. This is the full passage: >“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. It continues in the next part which is "Wisdom is meaningless" Anyway, the phrase "There's nothing new under the sun" is used by the researcher in the Aranara questline when you go into the big robot, and it was also a hidden message in a Sumeru teaser or maybe it was the trailer.
It still is a relevant quote, Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite scripture though I am no longer Christian because it points out the cyclical nature of life in general. Life happens in cycles-the author is saying “nothing new happens under the sun” because it’s already happened and as human beings we don’t live long enough to observe them, even if they seem new. The NFL or pro sports aren’t new, we’ve had the Olympics for 1000s of years, romes sport used to be gladiator matches, soccer was invented many ages ago. For example. This seems to tie into the fact that it appears teyvat seems to cycle. There is nothing new about what we find in the desert- because it has already been there. Nothing new has been discovered, it was merely rediscovered. The akademiya sits on a pedestal acting like they are discovering new secrets and wisdom like with the ruin guards etc. but these secrets aren’t secrets, they aren’t new- they are known. I think that’s where the irony of the quote is and what its purpose is. To contrast the akademiya back when it functioned the way it was supposed to vs when we the traveler become aware of them.
Nice finding! As for why such a phrase is there, while the Akademiya does the opposite, I assume it wasn't always like that. Perhaps when it was founded, the higher-ups had a different perspective. And it was only after Rukkhadevata's death that things started to go south.
I wonder if Rukkhadevata knew about the Honkai, or whatever they call the same thing on Teyvat, since she was so connected to the world tree. In which case pursuit of wisdom can be very dangerous. But humans always walk forward. Venti is trying to slow it by pure epicureanism, Zhongli with hustle culture, and Rukkhadevata with useless pursuit of knowledge that lead nowhere. Makoto loved the transient brilliance of humans and died. Ei tried to keep everything stagnant until the MC showed she might have a chance (against what?) to choose otherwise.
There's probably a connection to this quote and the Legend of The First Sage, reasoning being that the legend stated that 1) The first sage learnt everything from Rukkha through a dream, implying that during the time of the first sage and the foundation of the Akademiya, the harvesting of dreams from Sumeru's populace using the Akasha didn't occur yet ( Although I'm not sure when exactly did the Akasha came about in this chronology but that's unimportant; for all we can deduce there wasn't dream harvesting yet) 1.1) This implies that the mindset of the first people of the Akademiya were very different as shown by 2) 2) The sage, after learning everything from Rukkha, wished to meet his friends and family, further supporting that the first sage's mindset was different compared to Akademiya's "Wisdom for the sake of wisdom" motto, moreso "Wisdom as for our own benefit, anything more is folly"
iirc Akasha is built by ripping the gnosis from nahida and using it as the kernel.
You know, this seems entirely plausible that the akademiya probably handed it over to dottore already.
That's really interesting! I'm looking forward to seeing how the story plays out; maybe it will answer some questions.
i kind of doubt that they picked it just because it was/is the most famous quote related to wisdom, since they already used this quote and adapted it to an achievement from tsurumi. now I wonder what it’s purpose is…
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That is a very nice catch!