A brutally hot summer has wreaked havoc in many areas across Europe, with the country suffering its worst drought in decades. But one unexpected side effect has been the uncovering of history that has been hidden for years beneath some of the largest bodies of water. Weeks of baking temperatures and scant rainfall have drained water levels in some of the continent’s biggest lakes and rivers, causing transport delays and destroying the livelihoods of farmers. But the low water level also revealed some rarely seen pieces of history.
In Spain’s central province of Caceres, archaeologists were delighted when the water in the Valdecanas Reservoir receded far enough to reveal the rarely seen Guadalperal Dolmen. Called the Spanish Stonehenge, the circle of dozens of megalithic stones is believed to date back to 5000 BC. It was discovered by the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 as part of a rural development project under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Since then, he has only been fully visible four times. Similarly, in Germany, water levels in the Rhine River have dropped, revealing usually submerged boulders carved with decades-old dates. However, the reappearance of the so-called “hunger stones” has not been welcomed by Germans, who see it as a warning and a reminder of the hardships people faced during earlier droughts.
The Italian army was called in early August to carry out the controlled detonation of a World War II bomb discovered in low water after the Po River dried up. The country is facing its worst drought in 70 years and the areas around the Po have declared a state of emergency. The 1,000-pound bomb was discovered by fishermen in the small northern town of Borgo Virgilio on July 25. 3,000 residents had to be evacuated and bomb squads transported the device, which contained 240 kilograms of explosives, to a quarry.
Italy’s largest lake and major tourist destination, Lago di Garda, has also been suffering from drought, and a rocky beach recently appeared in Sirmione. The rock bottom was not exposed for many years and tourists were seen enjoying the newly discovered beach. Europe’s worst drought in years has pushed the mighty Danube River to one of its lowest levels in nearly a century and exposed the wreckage of dozens of explosives-laden German warships sunk during World War II near the Serbian river port city of Prahovo.
The vessels were among hundreds sunk along the Danube by Nazi Germany’s Black Sea Fleet in 1944 as it retreated from advancing Soviet forces and still impeded river traffic at low water levels. But this year’s drought, which scientists say is a result of global warming, has revealed more than 20 wrecks on a stretch of the Danube near Prague in eastern Serbia, many of which still contain tons of ammunition and explosives and pose a danger to shipping.
Read Now:In turkey 32 people were killed as bus crashed with many vehicles
