Water levels in rivers and lakes around Europe have dropped to levels few have seen before due to weeks of sweltering heat and drought, unveiling long-hidden treasures as well as some dangerous concerns.
The discovery of the "Spanish Stonehenge" in Spain, a prehistoric stone circle that was once submerged beneath a dam due to the worst drought in decades, has pleased archaeologists.
The stone circle, officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, is today completely exposed in a corner of the Valdecanas reservoir in the central province of Caceres, where officials claim the water level has fallen to 28 percent of its maximum level.
The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Since then it has only become fully visible four times.
Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century as a result of the drought, exposing the hulks of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.
The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces. The sunken ships still hamper river traffic during low water levels.
Italy has declared a state of emergency for areas around the River Po, and in late July a previously submerged 450kg (1,000-pound) World War II bomb was discovered in the low-running waters of the country’s longest river.
About 3,000 people living near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, close to the city of Mantua, were evacuated while military experts defused and carried out a controlled explosion of the US-manufactured device earlier this month.
Memories of past droughts have also been rekindled in Germany by the reappearance of so-called “hunger stones” along the Rhine river. Many such stones have become visible along the banks of Germany’s largest river in recent weeks.
Bearing dates and people’s initials, their re-emergence is seen by some as a warning and reminder of the hardships people faced during former droughts.
Dates visible on stones seen in Worms, south of Frankfurt, and Rheindorf, near Leverkusen, included 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.