It's also a quote from a character who's literally immortal and so has all the time in the world to learn things, which really undermines the premise.
"That I lived so much longer, just means, that I forgot much more, not that I know much more."
Memory might have a limited capacity, but of course, I doubt most humans use that capacity, or well, for useful things. I know I have plenty of useless knowledge ..
I think most farmers would be somewhat capable on most of that list. Equations for farm production. Programming tractor equipment. Setting bones. Giving and taking orders. Building houses and barns.
Building a single story building isn’t that difficult, but time consuming. Especially nowadays with YouTube videos and pre-planned plans.
Isn't that cheating? Shouldn't a properly self-reliant human be able to come up with the plans too?
That is exactly how our ancestors built houses. Also a traditional wooden house doesn't look complicated.
That being said, buildings collapse a lot less frequently these days. House fires happen at a lower rate. Insulation was either nonexistent or present in much lower quantities.
I guess the point I'm making is that the lesson here shouldn't be "we used to make our houses, why don't we go back to that?" It also shouldn't be "we should leave every task to a specialist."
Know how to maintain and fix the things around your house that are broken. You don't need a plumber to replace the flush valve on your toilet. But maybe don't try to replace a load-bearing joist in your house unless you know what you're doing? The people building their own homes weren't engineers, but they had a lot more carpentry experience than (I assume) you and I.
The only homes built by our ancestors that you see are those that didn't collapsed and killed whoever was inside, burned down, were too unstable to live in, were too much of a burden to maintain and keep around, etc.
>If a house builder built a house for a man but did not secure/fortify his work so that the house he built collapsed and caused the death of the house owner, that house builder will be executed.
If even professionals did get it wrong so often that there had to be law for it... Yeah, maybe it is not that simple.