In Spain, which is suffering from its worst drought in decades, archaeologists have been excited by the appearance of a prehistoric stone circle called the “Spanish Stonehenge” that is usually covered by the waters of a dam. Officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, the stone circle is currently fully exposed in a corner of the Valdecanas Reservoir, in the central province of Caceres, where authorities say the water level has dropped to 28% of capacity. It was discovered by the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Since then it has only been fully visible four times. 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 on the banks of Germany’s largest river in recent weeks. Bearing dates and people’s initials, their reappearance is seen by some as a warning and a reminder of the hardships people faced during previous droughts. Dates visible on stones in Worms, south of Frankfurt, and Rheindorf, near Leverkusen, included 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018. Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in nearly a century as a result of drought, exposing the hulls of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near in the port of the Serbian city of Prahovo. . The ships were among hundreds sunk along the Danube by Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces and still block river traffic at low water levels. Italy declared a state of emergency for the areas around the Po River, and in late July a 450-kilogram (1,000-pound) sunken World War II bomb was discovered in the low waters of the country’s longest river. About 3,000 people living near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, near the city of Mantua, were evacuated while military experts defused and detonated the US-made device earlier this month. (Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
