Drought in Europe reveals historic artifacts

 Smithsonian:

The ongoing drought and heat waves plaguing Europe this summer are drying up many of the continent’s rivers—and, in the process, revealing historic artifacts and infrastructure.

In Serbia, the receding waters of the Danube River near the town of Prahovo last week uncovered an array of World War II-era German warships, full of ammunition and explosive devices. The Nazis sank the ships while trying to dodge Soviet troops in 1944, per Reuters’ Fedja Grulovic.

Some 20 vessels are now exposed as the Danube shrinks to record lows. The ships, as well as an estimated 10,000 explosive devices in the water, make it more dangerous for shipping vessels and other boats to pass through this stretch of the river.

Though most of the German warships are buried under sand banks, some of their turrets, masts, hulls and command bridges are exposed. They’ve narrowed parts of the waterway from 590 feet to just 330 feet.

“The German flotilla has left behind a big ecological disaster that threatens us, [the] people of Prahovo,” says Velimir Trajilovic, a 74-year-old local resident who wrote a book about the vessels, to Reuters.

In central Spain, the drought has exposed the Dolmen of Guadalperal, a prehistoric stone circle that dates back to 5000 B.C.E. Nicknamed the “Spanish Stonehenge,” the megalithic display has been mostly covered by water since 1963, when crews flooded the area to build a dam and reservoir. German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier excavated the stones in the mid-1920s.

The stones are located in the Valdecañas reservoir, which is now at just 28 percent capacity because of the drought, report Reuters’ Silvio Castellanos and Marco Trujillo. A potential silver lining is that archaeologists now have a chance to study the relics, which have only been exposed a handful of times over the last six decades.

“It’s a surprise, it’s a rare opportunity to be able to access it,” Enrique Cedillo, an archaeologist at Complutense University of Madrid, tells Reuters.

But these are just a few of the latest examples of relics emerging from receding waters because of the drought; similar instances have been happening across Europe all summer. In late June, the drought exposed a sunken World War II barge resting on the bottom of the Po River in Italy. In July, the waters of the Tiber River, also in Italy, dipped so low that a normally submerged, first-century B.C.E. Roman bridge appeared. And earlier this month, the submerged village of Old Portomarín re-emerged from beneath the shrinking waters of Spain’s Belesar reservoir.
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There is much more including pictures of some of the artifacts.  It is an opportunity to examine the ancient history of the European continent.  I disagree with those who claim climate change is responsible for the revelations.  In fact, it is the opposite.  Many of these artifacts existed long before anyone thought of using fossil fuels.  The climate has always varied long before energy production for electricity and autos existed.