Quote Originally Posted by Lurina View Post
It doesn't really feel like a big mystery. You don't need knowledge to do basic art; even someone with 0 experience can smear a very rough image, like what you see in the cave paintings, just by recognition and imitation.

Language, on the other hand, requires knowledge. Anthropologists actually believe that painting predates complex speech. https://www.inverse.com/article/4151...uage-evolution
In the same room with the murals, in the same scene they’re revealed, Emet-Selch said that the memory of the Sundering was passed down in “song and scripture and paint”, which implies language.

While I can accept the revelations in NieR as canon, I also believe that Emet-Selch is also an unreliable narrator and like his Tales from the Shadows, he views the Sundered as not-people so his take on things is going to be colored by that perception.

The NieR tale isn’t a lore dump, it’s a story told by one person from their point of view. Just as a lot of people disagree with Venat’s point of view and how it was presented, the same could be said of Emet-Selch’s.