Why did the people of Zion never find evidence of the previous cycles?

Question

In each cycle of Zion and the Matrix, the One chooses those who will found the new Zion. I can see how the knowledge of the previous cycle might be lost in the first few generations of trying to simply stay alive — when all you can think about is where your next meal might be found, it's hard to apply energy to preserving knowledge.

What I don't get is why Zion doesn't rediscover evidence of the previous cycles. Either they rebuild in the same cavern, on the ruins of the old, destroyed Zion (and somehow ignore "Daddy, Granddad says the city was already here when he and the rest of the Founders arrived.") — or they started fresh in a new place.

If the latter, how could they possibly not have found the ruins of the old Zion and drawn the obvious conclusion? It's not like the machines had the entire surface of the Earth to locate a new Zion — I don't buy that being the case, and still having the movie Zion be just a short hop in a hovership from the Machine city.

Answer 1

This isn't functionally that far off some existing answers, but I wanted to stick a little more tightly to what I can cite (EDIT: I have corrected the initial quotes from script PDFs to match film dialog--all changes are minor, but check edit log if you care to see). This may make it less satisfying :)

1

If we can trust the Architect (and, as Neo makes clear, he does), the most direct answer to this question is (this is near the end of scene 269 from the October 27 2001 script--the page is numbered 120, but it's logical page 127 in the PDF):

ARCHITECT

You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed, its every living inhabitant terminated. Its entire existence eradicated.

Given the architect's general precision and candor, I think it's defensible to interpret his "entire existence eradicated" quite literally.

This doesn't really answer your root material question (whether it's the same cavern or a new location), but it does hint that their plans account for eradicating all evidence Zion existed.

2

A few pages before this (scene 266, numbered page 118, logical page 124), after the Architect tells Neo that there have been 5 previous iterations, they have this exchange:

NEO

There are only two possible explanations...

NEO (CONT'D)

... either no one told me, or no one knows.

ARCHITECT

Precisely.

I guess there are a number of ways to interpret this depending on how we imagine both Neo and the Architect understand the nuances of who "no one" includes. The Architect hasn't quite told Neo about the "intuitive program" yet, so Neo might include the Oracle in that set, or just humans outside of the matrix.

In any case, I'm inclined to take the Architect's answer very literally again--his absolute certainty that no one outside the matrix knows is further evidence that this is a core consideration of the design.

3

It isn't explicit in your question, but there's also (as has come up here) the question of why Neo wouldn't just tell the next 23 (which would make the question of evidence moot...)

Here's one more quote from the Architect (scene 270, numbered page 121, logical page 128):

ARCHITECT

The function of the One is to now return to the Source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program after which you will be required to select from the Matrix twenty three individuals, sixteen female, seven male, to rebuild Zion.

plus what Morpheus tells Neo in the first film (scene 43, numbered pages 43-44 and logical 44-45 in the March 29, 1998 numbered shooting script):

MORPHEUS

When the Matrix was first built there was a man born inside who had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.

MORPHEUS (CONT'D)

After he died, the Oracle prophesied his return and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people. That is why there are those of us who spent our entire lives searching the Matrix, looking for him.

There are a few things here that never seemed to square to me.

1. I doubt what Morpheus tells us about the man who can remake the matrix is "true" (especially if that man is end-of-the-last-iteration Neo), at least in the literal sense Morpheus seems to believe it. It's hard to imagine the system remaining stable for very long with an individual possessing that sort of power on the loose (consider that this description suggests vastly more power than rogue Smith or Neo ever demonstrate) unless that individual is basically just serving/supporting the system.

2. It seems like previous-iteration Neo would tell the first 23 people freed unless:

   • He finds or is given some compelling reason to lie to the initial 23.
   • He has no contact with them. He just picks who the machines release.
   • It's actually a new iteration of Neo's archetype with the function/directive to free the first 23 and then die (but still--they have to all be freed in a fairly short timeframe to have much chance at rebuilding...)

There's not much bedrock to reason from out this far, but my personal suspicion has been that returning to the source is a terminal action for previous-iterations-Neo, and that the "man" Morpheus tells us about (and probably also the Oracle's prophecy about him) is just part of the mythos/backstory the machines synthesize for the first people they (the machines) release. This seems to square well enough (not that other ideas don't...) with the Architect's certainty that the humans won't figure this out.

Answer 2

Let's say you are the previous One. You've been running amok in the Matrix while trying to help Zion. Whatever balancing mechanism has started to come into play and The Matrix is now becoming less stable. You finally make it to The Source and are told everything. You then have a terrible choice: you can continue fighting on and risk wiping out what little remains of humanity or you can give up and start over, knowing full well that Zion will be wiped out regardless.

Once the deed is done and everyone in Zion is dead, you play along with the reset. You make your selections and these plugged-in people are freed. The machines have no shortage of places to hide evidence. I mean, if you piled thousands of human corpses next to the Machine city 01 (which was heavily fortified), nobody would notice.

Why wouldn't The One tell them the truth? The first reason is simple shame. The One was the hero of Zion, but in the end they turned out to be nothing more than a mere puppet. The second was the realization that if you did tell them, they would be nothing more than hopeless sots, destined to die in some future cleansing by The Machines. With some hope that they could win, at least they would try. Though they failed their own Zions, these Ones made it possible for Neo to eventually break the cycle.

Answer 3

Am pretty sure that none of the existing Zion residents are left alive after a machine cull. The One releases a number of people from the Matrix and tells them about the truth of the Matrix.

Morpheus suggests this when he tells neo the one released the first of the population of Zion from the Matrix and told them the truth. We now know that was the latest in a line of Ones so if Morpheus believes that the first ones where released by the One it adds to the idea that the machines cull all survivors.

So in terms of the existing survivors forgetting, they never knew there was a previous Zion.

Now in terms of how the remnants of the original Zion are not found, who says they are not. The machines could clean them up and then the One could claim to the first released that these ruins are remains a last outpost of the war that will make a good first base, or that he had been spending time building and getting them ready. Or he could lead the survivors and "find them" by accident. There are lots of ways this could be done in a away remember the original residents will have just found out they lived in a computer simulation, that humans where batteries and, more importantly, are probably children or young teens.

Answer 4

What evidence of a cycle would be compelling? What would make the ruins of old Zion different than any other ruins of human cities that machines destroyed? None of the humans of old Zion knew that it was a cycle so it isn't like they left a message about it. As far as the founders are concerned they; escaped the matrix, ran for their lives, and founded a city in the ruins of an old human city. Even if they came across other cities that were obviously post matrix what screams cycle, rather than "hey, we weren't the first to escape"? What could a character in the story use to tell the difference between a "natural" periodic escape and resistance formation, and a periodic machine release. The only real difference would be ease of escape, which the characters have no way to gauge.

Answer 5

The machines eventually come to the conclusion that while Free Will is a flaw in their design, the lack of it also breaks the entire system. So they figure out how to manage it: Zion is built by the machines in the real world, the 23 chosen people are given a modified Matrix story up to that point (history, families, etc), and are unplugged and left there to start unplugging people once more. When Free Will spreads too much, the system reboots and starts the cycle over again. From the human perspective, there is continuity, but from the machine perspective, they've had to run through this cycle five times now. Whether the old Zion was razed and rebuilt or just altered back to a 'save point' is mostly irrelevant.