Amid the drought that hit different parts of the world this summer in the Northern Hemisphere — a phenomenon that scientists attribute to the climate emergency — a series of discoveries came to light, pardon the pun.
The lowest level of riverbeds in several countries has revealed archaeological discoveries, historical gems and even criminal remains. In Europe, for example, World War II warships and bombs reappeared, as well as curious rock formations.
In the US, they were the footprints of reptiles that lived 113 million years ago and, on the other side of the world, in China, an island with historic statues.
The season also collects other extreme weather events, which made England see thermometers exceed 40°C for the first time in history, countries like Portugal relive the trauma of deaths in forest fires, Mexico face shortages in water supply. in two-thirds of the country and that China would shut down factories because of the heat.
body in las vegas
On August 25, US authorities identified a body that had been found in May amid drought in Lake Mead, near Las Vegas. Thomas P. Erndt, 42, drowned in August 2002, according to the region’s National Park Service.
This year, four other bodies were found at the scene. The first, according to Bloomberg, is of a person shot and placed inside a barrel before being thrown into the largest reservoir in the US. The episode would have taken place between 1970 and 1980.
Million-year-old footprints in Texas
Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas announced on August 23 the discovery of new footprints from reptiles that lived 113 million years ago in the region. The revelation was only possible due to the drop in the level of a river that cuts through the site.
“Under normal conditions, these new footprints would be submerged and often filled with sediment, making them not visible even underwater,” a spokeswoman said. Most of the footprints, according to the park, would correspond to an adult acrocanthosaurus, weighing 6.3 tons and 4.5 meters tall.
Centenary statues in China
In the Asian country, the retreat in the level of the Yangtze River revealed a submerged island in the city of Chongqing. A trio of 600-year-old Buddhist statues were discovered at the site, according to estimates by state media Xinhua.
The artifacts were found on the highest part of the island’s reef, initially identified as a construction of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties.
Rainfall in the river basin has been about 45% below normal since July. At least 66 rivers flowing through 34 counties in Chongqing have dried up, state TV said.
Artifacts of WWII in Europe
On the Danube River, near the port city of Prahovo, Serbia, the drought has revealed wrecks of German warships from the 1940s. Some of them were still loaded with explosive devices.
The existence of shipwrecks is nothing new, as even today they hinder river traffic at times when the water level drops too low. But this year’s drought exposed, among sandbanks and almost entirely, the carcass of more than 20 of them.
Days earlier, at the end of July, Italian authorities found a bomb, also from the Second World War, submerged in the Po River, in the Lombardy region. The 450-kilogram artifact was dismantled two weeks later and the 3,000 nearby residents had to be evacuated from their homes for the operation.
Italy even declared a state of emergency for areas around the Po in July. The river irrigates a third of the country’s agricultural production and is facing its worst drought in at least 70 years.
Historic stone buildings in Europe
In Central Europe, the so-called hunger stones were visible. They receive this name because, in past droughts, the population engraved on the rocks a kind of mark of the difficulty caused by the drought. According to the BBC, the oldest inscription found in the Elbe basin dates from 1616 and is in German. She says “wenn du mich siehst, dann weine” —”if you see me, cry”.
To the west, drought in the Iberian Peninsula has exposed rocks formed 5,000 years ago, which form a kind of local Stonehenge, in a reservoir in southern Spain.
In Rome, the drought also exposed pillars of a Roman Empire-era bridge on the Tiber River near the Vatican. According to the Associated Press, the structure belonged to a 1st century building, at the time of Nero as emperor, which collapsed in the 3rd century.
