{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_5/index_u76.html\", \"frag\": \"article_5\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_5\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Anterior","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articleprevlink"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_5/article_4/index_u19.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"Charlemagne","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"To grasp Europe’s fragmentations, look to a 31-year treasure hunt","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"The Golden Owl is a parable for a changing continent","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 01:49 ","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u6.jpg"],["title","A large owl with bright eyes flies in a starry night sky. Below, a man digs with a shovel near a spooky house. A crescent moon hangs to the left."],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_5/article_5/images/img1_u6.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"I","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"N THE SPRING","l":" of 1993 an obscure French publisher proposed a novel form of entertainment to people as yet unable to squander hours watching TikTok videos. “In Search of the Golden Owl”, a slender illustrated volume, referred to a life-size statue of the nocturnal bird designed by one of the authors, cast using three kilograms of gold, even more silver and encrusted with diamonds. The tome’s other author had devised 11 riddles that would lead successful sleuths to the precise spot where he had buried a bronze replica of the owl. The clues were fiendishly cryptic, requiring knowledge of history, science and other dark arts to unlock. The organisers thought it would take amateur investigators up to two years to crack the code; whoever unearthed the replica prize could exchange it for the real owl, said to be worth 1m francs (over €250,000 in today’s money, or nearly $300,000), as well as a cellar of fine wine. Not quite, as it turned out. On May 2nd 2025, after armchair adventurers had spent three decades looking for the wretched talisman, the organisers revealed the solution. The continent in which the game had started in 1993 had morphed into something different altogether. The “owlers”—an early manifestation of how shared obsessions can give rise to niche communities—had something to do with it.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The fact that the denouement was revealed in the form of a documentary shown in 400 cinemas shows how the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"chouette d’or","l":" had captured the popular imagination. An estimated 200,000 people are said to have tried their luck at unearthing the bird over the years. Many Poirot pretenders were lured into a false sense of confidence by one riddle, which spelled out ","a":[["class","calibre18"]]},{"n":"span","x":"B-O-U-R-G-E-S","l":", a city in central France. Through further deduction and triangulation, everyone crafted their own pet theory as to where the prize was hidden. Many were after an inside tip, which had helped bring Masquerade, a similar treasure hunt launched in 1979 in Britain, to a close after just three years. Failing that, you had to dig. Plenty did, in forests and grasslands, often at night lest a rival ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"i","x":"chouetteur","l":" might be on the same track; one had even rooted in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. Many divined that Dabo, a village near the German border, marked the spot. Since 1993 it has been so continuously burrowed by shovel-wielding visitors that parts of it were left looking like a first-world-war battlefield.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Some “owlers” were in it for the money—gold is worth its weight in gold, after all—others for the thrill of the chase. Among owlers, schisms worthy of minor academic departments soon formed. For each ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Daboïste","l":" digging near Strasbourg you could find an equally fervent ","a":[["class","calibre18"]]},{"n":"i","x":"anti-Daboïste","l":"; this being France, one fellow even described himself as a ","a":[["class","calibre18"]]},{"n":"i","x":"méta-Daboïste","l":". Many felt the death in 2009 of the original riddler-in-chief, a marketing consultant whose identity had been a secret while he lived, would mark the end of the game. His erstwhile partner, the maker of the owl, had not been privy to the game’s solution. The new fellow had even put the statue—the sacred prize!—up for auction in 2014, until owlers hooted in collective protest loud enough to stop the sale. In 2021 the late riddler’s wife passed the solution to his co-author. The new gamemaster, in his 70s by then, tweaked the workings of the game in ways that made it easier for the ","a":[["class","calibre18"]]},{"n":"i","x":"chouette ","l":"to be found. Could it be because he had planned to launch a second treasure hunt, bringing a new generation of players to the game?","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"And then—finally—someone found the damn thing. In October 2024 it was announced that a duo of diggers had come forward with the magic bird’s replica, and a credible solution to the enigmas. The identity of the winners remains unknown; they were given the golden owl and disappeared overseas. But it was only last week in the documentary that the location of their successful dig was revealed: it had indeed been in Dabo after all. Veteran owlers, some of whom suffered divorce and depression in pursuit of the prize, griped that the super-solution tying together the answers to the 11 riddles lacked the elegance they had chased for so long. Some think they have been strung along. Others believe another replica ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"chouette","l":" is still out there, waiting to be found.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"h4","x":"Wild goose chase, more like","a":[["class","calibre15"]]},{"n":"p","x":"It is easy to dismiss hordes of wannabe Indiana Joneses turning France into Swiss cheese as a sign of frivolity. Is this something their parents, a generation that had endured war and reconstruction, would have indulged in? Probably not. But the game’s fans in 1993 offered a foretaste of society in 2025. The owlers were among the first online communities anywhere in the world, connected by Minitel, a French precursor of the internet that ran online discussions on the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"chouette","l":" from 1993. Using pseudonymous handles—there were Gandalf and Argos, Météor and Neo49—the sleuths queried the gamemaster online (for a fee) years before others had ever heard of such forums. Later, internet groups emerged and rival owlers’ associations met in person to share their theories.","a":[["class","calibre18"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Once Europeans lived in cohesive societies, with institutions such as churches, trade unions or political parties structuring public life. Owlers were in the vanguard of a trend towards something different: people disappearing into their own little clans, with their own rituals and networks. Jérôme Fourquet, a French political analyst, describes the “archipelagisation” of society, a shift in recent decades from a unified national identity bound together by common experience to a collection of distinct and often disconnected groups with their own interests. We live side by side, but not entirely together. From watching the same evening news, we are all consuming our own corner of the web. From all voting for one of two or three political parties, more niche outfits have emerged—including, across Europe, populist ones that have benefited from the fraying of our bonds. We all dwell in bubbles of our own making these days, a wise old owl might conclude. ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Opinion newsletter","l":", which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/opinion"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/08/to-grasp-europes-fragmentations-look-to-a-31-year-treasure-hunt","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/08/to-grasp-europes-fragmentations-look-to-a-31-year-treasure-hunt"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_5/index_u76.html\", \"frag\": \"article_5\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_5\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}