Opinion | The Lesson of the Château de Calberte

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  • Opinion | The Lesson of the Château de Calberte - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/opinion/chateau-de-calberte-france-history.html

    When lunch was finished, Mr. Darnas insisted that I had to see something. He took me for a tour along the exterior wall. The Château de Calberte is jammed onto a steep, rocky outcrop and the wall in some places is at least 20 feet high.

    He explained that when he and Ms. Darnas had first seen the place the walls had long since caved in on themselves. The couple pulled the stones out and eventually solved the jigsaw puzzle of how they had originally been assembled. He pointed to the different layers of stone just above our heads. The first layers were flat and had been cut by masons in such a way that they fit together effortlessly with very little mortar. He asked me to look a little higher. The stones were smaller and more haphazardly arranged.

    His theory was the workmen who initially built the chateau had very advanced masonry skills. But over the centuries, as the region suffered war, plague and economic collapse, those skills had been lost. The last workmen who expanded the chateau simply didn’t know the advanced stonecutting techniques. The upper layer of the walls with the tinier stones was weak, more easily breached, and the walls were broken down again and again by brigands until the place was abandoned.

    Do you understand why I’m telling you this story? he asked in a schoolmasterly way.

    Yes, I said. Human progress isn’t a one-way process. We can forget how to build things. We can go backward as well as forward. He nodded.

    And, of course, it isn’t just technological #innovation that can go backward. Societies can forget the social and political innovations that allowed them to flourish.

    #régression #progrés

    Via naked capitalism

    • Je suis subjugué de lire dans le New York Times un discours dont je fais régulièrement la démonstration aux amis et amies qui me rendent visite dans les Cévennes (où se trouve donc ce fameux château de Calberte et d’autres du même tonneau, comme le château de Brésis ou celui d’Aujac), les Cévennes où ce genre de pertes de savoirs, de compétences, et tout simplement de force et d’endurance, sont considérables. Très peu de maçons cévenols savent encore construire un toit en lauzes ou même en réparer un. De telles compétences sont à la fois rares et trop demandées.

      Et de fait dans mes explications sur les raisons de telles disparitions, je manque rarement un petit tour par exemple devant le monument aux morts du village d’Aujac, d’où 45 jeunes gens ont été sacrifiées pendant 14-18, dans un village dans lequel ne doivent pas vivre plus de vingt personens à l’année en 2018.

      Oui, il y avait de la vie et de la compétence dans cette région.

    • En arrondissant les nombres : environ 70 000 habitants en Lozère en 1990 : le double, un siècle auparavant. Le déclin commence un peu avant la guerre de 14 mais s’accélère après. Une partie de la réponse est effectivement sur les monuments aux morts...