well, i dont understand it. When you are in the temple of the ancuents you will see that the ancients are...ugly! and they are not like aeris who is practically human! why???? :o


and they dont speak well, they only know to say:
hmhmmm something like this!!


why?????


and aeris can understand theme!!



so, why the ancients of the temple are so rare, and ifalna and aeris are so pretty??

please, help me!!

Well, erm, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And we don't really get the best view of them really, Aeris is just a little pixel character most of the time too, we think she is pretty because she is pure and, admitedly, there are a lot of pictures of her available. We don't get to see high quality images of these other Ancients.

I always figured that some Ancients are different, I really don't know why. We have Aeris and her mother, perfectly fluent in our language because they've stayed in Midgar for so long (and Ifalna married a non-Ancient I believe?). But the Ancients travel a lot, probably don't have a clue what "English" is, they'll use their own language thus why Aeris can understand it and we can't.

^Yep, Ifalna married all-human Professor Gast. ^_^

@Daga15: The Ancients in the temple were the SPIRITS of Ancients who had died a long time ago, but had stopped themselves from returning to the Planet. They chose to remain at the temple. So they are not "real people", but more like "manifestations".

One can imagine that it would take a lot of willpower and mental strength for a ghost to maintain an almost-physical presence in the world, so perhaps that is why they adopt a more grotesque figure. After all, when you're out protecting a temple in the middle of nowhere, the last thing you want to spend your precious energy on are nicely-manicured nails. :P

As for their strange speech: One can say that, after years of existing in solitude and presumably not having to talk, they have forgotten how to speak using the current tongue. Again, efficient use of energy is the idea here-- why spend extra energy on communication through the mouth when you can just "think" your speech? Because they are spiritually connected to the Planet, which can "speak" to Aerith, they can communicate to Aerith using the Planet.

As for what the Ancients looked like, I believe they didn't look too different from Ifalna and Aerith... Well, the present ones anyway. No doubt they would've looked slightly different 2000 years ago, but even then, probably not extremely alien.

But you can think of it in another way too: Jenova infiltrated the Ancients at least 2000 years ago. To do so, she had to adopt an image similar to theirs. If you believe Jenova was in that "Ancient" form when the they sealed her in the Northern Crater, and that she maintained the form while being studied and kept in the Nibel Reactor-- that of a rather pretty woman (despite the eye in her boob :P)-- then that could be what female Ancients looked like 2000 years ago.

thanks lynn, now i understand better :P

Assuming the ones you encounter ever knew it to begin with. We really don't know how long they've been dead. maybe they current speak wasn't widly used yet, or maybe they just remained isolated and spoke their own language.

According to Wikipedia, Ancients look exactly like humans.

Well, I wouldn't really call Wikipedia reliable, since anyone can go in there and change the information, but since Ifalna looked human, I always assumed that other Cetra did as well. :P