Qu’on me donne un point d’appui et j’ébranlerai la Terre. À la recherche des savants celtes oubliés

Résumé En

This article echoes Béatrice Cauuet's work on Gallic mines and, more specifically, on the evolution of the technical level of protohistoric societies, which she has been able to highlight in the course of her research. Béatrice has shown that, while gold mining has been documented in France since the Bronze Age (Les Fouilloux, Dordogne; Cros-Gallet Nord, Haute-Vienne)1, mining techniques evolved considerably from the middle of the 3rd century B.C. These advances led to a significant increase in gold production, stimulated by growing demand at a time when the first coins were being issued by the Celts. Béatrice Cauuet and her team have shown that between the 3rd and 1st centuries B.C., new mining techniques emerged, such as the timbering of galleries, the practice of exhaure2 and the use of lifting machines to evacuate water. These advances concerned not only metal extraction at ever greater depths, but also the entire ore processing chain. Around two centuries earlier, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the art of mining had made significant progress in Greece, particularly in the Laurion mines. It was in this important mining complex in the Athens polis that the principle of the vertical shaft appears to have emerged, as well as the unprecedented development of knowledge of deposits and veins3.These technological developments were not confined to mining, either in Greece or Gaul. On the contrary, they affected a wide range of fields, from architecture to the production of objets d'art and everyday objects - in fact, all fields requiring the introduction of theoretical principles such as mathematics, geometry and hydraulics. In the absence of written texts by the Celts themselves, theoretical and technological advances can only be revealed through analysis of archaeological remains. It's the material culture and architecture that must be deciphered in order to discover them, and to flush out the Celtic scientists whose names have not gone down in history, but whose artistic and architectural works can still be admired today.