Os Grandes Antigos pode ser humanos Keystone

Para o melhor do meu conhecimento, King não confirmou (ou negou) explicitamente que os Antigos são humanos da Terra Keystone. Dito isto, ainda existem evidências apontando nas duas direções.

Existem boas razões para pensar que elas podem ser ...

Como Robin Furth diz em A Torre Negra: Uma Concordância Completa:

The Old People may have been technological wizards, but in the long run, little good came from their experiments with the time/space continuum. They may have created DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS, but they also built the DOGANS, the sinister equipment found in the DEVAR-TOI, and the diseases (such as the Red Death) which destroyed the people of FEDIC. Unfortunately, the Great Old Ones could well be our own descendants. As Roland so wryly notes when he visits NEW YORK, 1999, that city looks like a young and vibrant LUD.

—The Dark Tower: A Complete Concordance

Furth reitera esse ponto em entrevista:

Long before Roland’s time, a highly advanced culture, known as the Great Old Ones, ruled Mid-World. Although these people had the knowledge of gods, they were also reckless and warlike. It was the fallout of their wars that caused Mid-World’s mutations and the horrible desiccation of the landscape. In The Waste Lands, we see one of the Great Old Ones’ major cities. It is called Lud and is much like our world’s New York. In fact, it seems very likely that Lud is a future version of our New York. Hence, the fate of Roland’s world is a fate that quite possibly could await our world.

A opinião de Furth deve ter algum peso, já que ela é assistente de pesquisa de King há muito tempo.

Além disso, a presença no mundo inteiro de empresas associadas aos Grandes Antigos, como a Sombra Corporation e a North Central Positronics, deve nos dar motivos para suspeitar que os Antigos do Mundo sejam residentes no futuro próximo da Keystone Earth. A presença de marcas genéricas não fornece muita evidência, como discutido abaixo, mas os remanescentes de empresas fundadas pelos Grandes Antigos, que se intrometiam nas viagens dimensionais e na estrutura do universo, certamente são uma pista mais forte.

... mas também há razões para pensar que não são.

Por outro lado, a mera presença de marcas semelhantes não precisa ser interpretado como evidência de que Mid-World (que contém Lud) e Keystone World, que contém Nova York que Roland frequentemente visita durante a série Dark Tower são de fato os mesmos.

Existem vários mundos no universo da Torre Negra, muitos dos quais têm locais ou indivíduos semelhantes.

King and coauthor Peter Straub introduced the concept of Twinners, people who have one-to-one counterparts in an alternate reality, in The Talisman. While the Dark Tower series doesn’t make the same use of this notion, twins feature prominently in the two central realities, Keystone Earth and Mid-World, themselves twins of a sort.

—The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

Foi escrito por Bev Vincent, que foi autorizado por King e recebeu muitas notas e manuscritos pré-publicação. Note que Mid-World e Keystone Earth são descritas como realidades separadas. A semelhança entre Lud e Nova York pode muito bem ser devida à geminação de lugares (e de fato empresas), além de pessoas.

Places are also twinned. The Mohaine Desert is geographically similar to the Mohave. Mejis is twinned with Mexico. Residents of Stoneham, Maine, have the same last names as many of those in Calla Bryn Sturgis, and some of the towns’ buildings are alike. New York is twinned with Lud. The Dixie Pig’s kitchen is identical to the one in Castle Discordia where Mia feeds.

—The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

De acordo com Vincent, o mundo de origem de Jake ainda tem uma Nova York, mas o bairro de Co-Op City está em um local diferente:

Co-Op City is really in the Bronx, not Brooklyn, so Jake’s world isn’t Keystone Earth, even though the rose exists here. Jake and Eddie may or may not come from the same reality.

—The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

Além disso, considere o Topeka alternativo em Assistente e Vidro. Como diz Eddie:

"Are we back home? If we are, where are all the people? And if something like Blaine has been stopping off in Topeka—our Topeka, Topeka, Kansas—how come I haven't seen anything about it on Sixty Minutes?"

—Wizard and Glass

Roland e companhia mais tarde estabelecem que isso é nãode fato, o mesmo mundo de onde Eddie veio:

"So this...this never happened," Jake said, tentatively touching the face of Christ on the back page of the paper.

"But it did," Roland said. "It happened in June-sowing of the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. And here we are, in the aftermath of that plague. If Eddie's right about the length of time that has gone by, the plague of this 'superflu' was this past June-sowing. We're in Topeka, Kansas, in the Reap of eighty-six. That's the when of it. As to the where, all we know is that it's not Eddie's. It might be yours, Susannah, or yours, Jake, because you left your world before this arrived."

—Wizard and Glass

Se houver vários Topekas, pode facilmente haver vários Nova York. Como diz Roland:

What's more to it is that there are many possible worlds, and an infinity of doors leading into them. This is one of those worlds; the thinny we can hear is one of those doors . . . only one much bigger than the ones we found on the beach."

—Wizard and Glass

Dado que existem várias Terras no universo de King, então, muitas das quais presumivelmente têm suas próprias Nova York, pode ser que Lud nada mais seja do que um gêmeo da Keystone New York, como de fato todas as outras Nova York.

Que as marcas no universo de Roland sejam semelhantes às marcas na Keystone Earth não deve ser mais surpreendente do que as cidades de Topeka ou Nova York existem em vários mundos, ou que as Topeka Capital-Journal existe em mais de um universo.

Talvez a evidência mais forte seja a forma que a Torre assume no mundo inteiro, em oposição à sua forma na Terra Keystone.

No mundo inteiro, a torre é uma torre literal:

He looked up again, hearing his neck creak like hinges in an old door, and there, still miles ahead but now visible on the horizon, real as roses, was the top of the Dark Tower. That which he had seen in a thousand dreams he now saw with his living eyes. Sixty or eighty yards ahead, the road rose to a higher hill with an ancient Speaking Ring moldering in the ivy and honeysuckle on one side and a grove of ironwood trees on the other. At the center of this near horizon, the black shape rose in the near distance, blotting out a tiny portion of the blue sky.

—The Dark Tower

Por outro lado, sua forma na Terra Keystone (assim como na Terra de Jake e talvez em outras) é a de uma rosa.

Jake passes Tower Records after he leaves the Manhattan bookshop owned by Calvin Tower, the guardian of the rose, which is the Tower’s representation in New York.

—The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

De fato, há motivos para suspeitar que o campo de rosas ao redor da Torre no Todo-Mundo represente sua manifestação em outros mundos de alguma forma:

Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower and the voice of the roses—these voices were now one.

—The Dark Tower

E mais:

They feed the Beams, don’t they? With their songs and their perfume. As the Beams feed them. It’s a living force-field, a giving and taking, all spinning out from the Tower. And this is only the first, the farthest outrider. In Can’-Ka No Rey there are tens of thousands, just like this.

—The Dark Tower

É difícil conceber uma razão pela qual a Torre seria uma rosa genérica na Keystone Earth em um ponto no tempo, enquanto assumia sua forma verdadeira, única e de múltiplos universos em algum momento no futuro.

Bev Vincent sugere algumas explicações adicionais para as semelhanças entre Keystone Earth e All-World:

Roland’s land may represent a reality that evolved similarly to Earth but at a faster rate, proceeding beyond the currently known state of things to some undefined cataclysm that destroyed everything. How else to explain the preponderance of things in Mid-World that are known on Earth—machinery, oil plants, the Bible, “Hey Jude”?

Another explanation is that people in Mid-World borrowed these things from Earth by traveling through the doorways that connect realities. Blaine the Mono knows about Earth culture because of doorways. In his supersonic travels he may even have crossed the boundaries between worlds in thin places, which would explain how he derails in an Earth-like version of Topeka. The Manni have often passed between worlds, and the travel posters and brochures near some doorways in New York and Fedic indicate that Earth was a popular tourist destination for Mid-Worlders in times gone by. The only place on Earth where this interdimensional travel is noticeable is in western Maine, where walk-ins started appearing in the late 1970s.

—The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus

Nesse sentido, é muito possível que os Grandes Antigos tenham desenvolvido uma Corporação Sombra ou uma Positronics da Central Norte, simplesmente porque o Todo-Mundo se desenvolveu como a Terra, mas mais rapidamente.

Tudo isso é uma evidência convincente de que É improvável que todo o mundo seja apenas o futuro da Keystone Earthe, assim, que os Grandes Antigos são improvável que sejam as descidas da humanidade moderna da Keystone.

Por outro lado, Vincent também propõe um mecanismo pelo qual os Grandes Antigos podem de fato ser humanos Keystone, e Sombra Corporation e assim por diante, enquanto ainda mantêm o Mundo Todo e a Terra Keystone separados (como, de fato, o peso das evidências parece indicar ):

Other modern contraptions may appear in Mid-World because they were brought from another world—including our own—because some people still know the secret of how to travel between universes. It is conceivable that the Great Old Ones were people from our modern Earth who traveled to Mid-World in its distant past.

—The Dark Tower Companion

_{^{Credit to Wad Cheber for pointing this out.}}

No entanto, é difícil dizer se essa explicação ou o desenvolvimento paralelo mencionado anteriormente é mais plausível.

Como Bev Vincent disse em uma comunicação para mim:

There's speculation, but no proof.

Como tal, os humanos da Terra Keystone poderiam facilmente ser os Grandes Antigos, mas não precisam ser.