Is there a Lost City hiding in the Gerudo Desert? 🤔

In one of the memory cut scenes, the Gerudo sage mentions that the last free Gerudo settlement has fallen. That suggests there were several other than Kara Kara Bazaar and Gerudo Town.

Something to support this theory is that in the past, the gerudo population should have been as numerous as hylians or even greater numbers to wage wars in such a way as hinted in this game and others

If Nintendo had included a playable Princess Zelda where we get see more of Ancient Hyrule from the distant past and explore the in depth backstory of this version of in  Tears of the Kingdom, perhaps there could’ve given us a grand opportunity to see what these lost Gerudo civilizations is like before turned into ruins.

I'm surprised how you didn't mentioned the heroines statues, one of them has completely sink down due to the unstable sand, also i think gerudo town was made on top of an older one (probably the one ganondorf habited since in it has scripts of the lighting temple and the lighting temple probably was made to protect the secret stone after ganon was sealed) but with the time the town was getting burried by the sand so the gerudo decided to make another city on the roof of the original one thus explaining why they wanted to leave secret entrances to their history and also why the walls have the rocky appearance just as if once was a mountain or something like that

I always thought the ruins scattered about were from ancient cities. Plus in one of the dragon tear memories, one of that sages says "the last free village in gerudo desert has fallen." that implies that there were more towns.

I think it's pretty much a certainty that there was a significantly larger Gerudo population in the past. In one of the memories, it's reported that "the last free settlement" of Gerudo had fallen to Ganondorf. Meaning that there were multiple settlements at that time. It's possible that all the ruins we find in BotW/TotK are remnants of Ganondorf's invasion of the desert.

Great content!! IMO the Gerudo Region is the epitome of mystery, intrigue, deep lore, obfuscation, horror, otrosities, frustration and in some cases utter disgust. But strangely you can find: sand, rock. water, ice and Noble Pursuits all in one region. I believe, much like other deserts in our real beauty world, the deserts in botw and totk were once saturated with water and brimming with life. The presence of hydromelon and palm fruit, normally found in coastal villages, only confirms this theory. But....what happened? Climate change? Zonai Invasion?

The lightning temple might be a reference to mysterious pyramid seen in OoT. The one that can only be seen when lightning lights up the horizon, Of course we now know that object was just a regular mountain, But if one were to headcanon there is indeed a pyramid out there, The easter egg is a nice wink to that.

What if the Ancient Hero WAS a Zonai-hybrid and thus an original schism between Hylians and Gerudo comes from dual claims to the Hyrulean throne?

You raise a good point Adam.  I don't think this grand city you speculate about would have existed in the time of Ganondorf during the founding of Hyrule.  I say that because the Ancient Sage reports in a memory to Rauru that the last "free Gerudo village" had fallen.  As such, I'm inclined to say that there are many small Gerudo settlements across the desert, even beyond the boundary of the map, probably going out to the coast.  From the sky, you can see that from Gerudo Canyon to the Lightning Temple, that is only about halfway out to the coast, so there is a lot of desert we don't get to explore.

Perhaps in an even more ancient time, there was a grand city that you propose.  It's possible that within the 10,000 or so years since Ganondorf's time, the Gerudo built such a thing.  I think it is equally possible that they just built these smaller structures for whatever reason.

In one of the cutscenes they talk about how the last free village in gerudo desert fell, I believe the desert used to be like central hyrule with many village dotted across the landscape

In one of the geoglyphs the zora champion says "we've just got word that the last village in the gerudo desert has fallen" meaning that there were many gerudo people and villages they lived in but probably all got destroyed by Ganon's army.

Hyrule Gamer: It’s on the verge of crackpot conspiracy theorist…
Alex Jones as Zelda conspirist: THEY’RE TURNING THE FROX GAY!

This seems quite likely to me. If not one city, there wwere likely several city-states across the desert.

Whoever was in charge of designing the Gerudo area of TOTK knocked it out of the park. That one region has almost everything great about this Zelda iteration but in concentrate form. There's all the mysterious areas and ruins. The mysteries themselves, such as the state of the city when you arrive. The cool temple. Intriguing lore. Creepy monsters. NPCs with their own interesting things going on. All the surprising things with the Yiga clan. And a genuinely new landscape not found in BOTW (not talking about caves).

I think there are a few things that aren’t quite considered in this video. For starters, the reality of just how vast the desert actually is. Unlike all of the other borders surrounding Hyrule, the Gerudo Desert doesn’t end at a cliff or an ocean, there’s an invisible wall that prevents you from going further but the actual desert itself stretches on into the horizon. I always figured the playable area consists of the settled/populated area of the desert. Based on the ancient sage’s dialogue about “the last free settlement falling” I assumed all of the ruins throughout the desert were all connected to larger settlements/villages with the Gerudo Town we know today being the capitol of it all. While I’m sure Ganondorf made good use of the prisons and stuff, I bet they all fell into ruin following his imprisonment. Also, due to the destruction brought on by the imprisoning war, the rest of the Gerudo settlements were probably abandoned in the aftermath with the few remaining Gerudo deciding to just live in the main city where the chief’s palace is. The desert would end up just eating all of the abandoned areas over the tens of thousands of years afterwards

It should be noted that sinkholes are often caused by groundwater moving, so the ruins under the sinkholes could have originally been near water sources on the surface in the ancient past.

I was so disappointed that the Lightning Temple wasn't just called the Arbiter's Grounds. They already had an amazing ruin that basically serves the same narrative purpose as the Lightning Temple. Why did we need it?
If nothing else, at least we got our mysterious pyramid that was rumored in OoT.

I believe it wasn't a massive city, but rather a series of villages of differing sizes. Lukely from different eras.