Drought in Europe reveals ancient stones and ships from World War II

Severe drought across Europe has reduced rivers and lakes to levels few remember, exposing underwater secrets and some unwelcome dangers.

Weeks of severe drought across Europe have seen water in rivers and lakes drop to levels few remember, exposing underwater treasures and some unwanted dangers.

In Spain, which suffered its worst drought in decades, archaeologists were delighted with the appearance of a prehistoric stone circle called the "Spanish Stonehenge" that is usually flooded by a dam.

Officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalberl, the stone circle is now completely exposed in a corner of the Valdecanas reservoir in the central province of Cáceres, where authorities say the water level has fallen to 28% of the reservoir's capacity.

The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 by a rural development project during the rule of Francisco Franco. Since then, she has only been seen in full four times.

Memories of past droughts in Germany resurfaced with the re-emergence of the so-called "hunger stones" along the Rhine. Some of these stones appeared along the banks of Germany's largest river in the past weeks.

Some of these stones bear dates and initials of some people's names, and some view their reappearance as a warning and reminder of the hardships people faced during previous droughts.

The dates seen on stones in Worms, south of Frankfurt, Rheindorf and near Leverkusen include 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.

The Danube, one of Europe's other large rivers, sank to one of its lowest levels in nearly a century as a result of a drought, revealing the hulls of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near the Serbian port of Prahovo.

The ships were among the hundreds sunk by Nazi Germany's Black Sea Fleet along the Danube in 1944 as they withdrew from Soviet forces, and they continue to block river traffic as water levels drop.

Italy declared a state of emergency in the areas around the Po River, and in late July a bomb dating from World War II, weighing 450 kilograms, was discovered submerged in the low waters of the country's longest river.

And evacuated about 3,000 people living near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio near the city of Mantua, while military experts defused the bomb made by the United States and carried out a controlled explosion.