What Droughts Have Revealed

Severe droughts are happening all around the world at the moment, highlighting how extreme weather patterns have become more frequent through climate change.

As rivers and lakes are drying up and reservoirs grow emptier, droughts have revealed historical sites that have long laid underwater as well as new discoveries - some relevant to scientists and others to forensic units.

In Spain, Czechia, Italy, Iraq and China, sites of historical value are once against visible - some of them dating back to Roman times or even the Bronze Age. Archeologists have at times scrambled to take advantage of the droughts, like in the case of the ancient site of Kemune in Iraq. Some newer reveals happened when reservoirs drained more recently abandoned villages in Galicia and Catalonia, Spain, and Hesse, Germany. A new discovery is probably the oldest of the bunch: At Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas, fossilized dinosaur track that are estimated to be 113 millions years old emerged from a dried-up riverbed.

Also in the U.S., several bodies have been discovered in May, July and August when the water levels of Lake Mead sank. One of the remains was identified as a homicide victim that might be tied to Mafia violence in Las Vegas in the 1950s and 60s. Another haunting discovery are the so-called hunger stones that are once again visible in the river bed of the Elbe near Decin in the Czech Republic. Inscriptions - likely from the 15th century - tell of a severe past drought and the famine it caused. The quote "If you see me, weep" is a stark reminder of the power and the horror of natural disasters.