Nazi Ships, Bodies In Barrels, Lost Cities And Other Finds Revealed By Drought In Pictures

Around the world, it’s been a particularly intense time for drought thanks in large part to climate change. Lately the impacts have become increasingly visible in dry river and lakebeds across continents where everything from old World War II bombs and Nazi ships to dinosaur tracks and even human bodies have been emerging from the receding waters.

In the western United States the Colorado River Basin is parched, with major reservoirs like Lake Mead at a fraction of typical capacity. As a result, freshwater arms of manmade lakes have been transforming back to dry and scenic side canyons. A more macabre development has been the re-emergence of mishaps and murders from generations past like this previously submerged boat.

Easily the most grisly of the many dried-up discoveries has been the human body that was found shoved in a rusted-out barrel near the Lake Mead marina. The remains have undergone DNA testing to see if it could be linked to a missing person case from 45 years ago.

Other human remains and artifacts that pre-date the reservoir itself have also been found. The Mormon community of Saint Thomas in Nevada was flooded seven decades ago when the Colorado River was dammed to create Lake Mead.

Now, as the climate appears intent on returning the river back to its initial state, bones, dishes and other remnants of the forgotten pioneer town are resurfacing.

Dredging Up War’s Remnants

Parts of Europe have been getting a similar treatment to the arid American west the past few years.

But the result has been the re-emergence of the collateral damage from a war still in living memory. In fact some of the remnants remain a bit too hot to handle, like the unexploded World War II bomb exposed on the dry bed of the Po River in Italy this month.

The same river was once plied by German forces, including this barge that may have been sunk while trying to flee as allied forces were pushing back axis powers in the war’s final months.

It isn’t just Italian waters where Nazi metal is seeing sun for the first time in decades. More of Hitler’s wrecks have been spotted in the Danube, among other places.

History Returning to the Present

Perhaps most remarkable is the number of artifact from the deeper (sometimes much deeper) past that have been revealed.

The Roman military camp of Aquis Querquennis was flooded by the construction of a dam in Spain decades ago. Researchers have made a habit of working to excavate as much of the ruins as possible each time in the past that drought has brought the water levels down.

This time around they’ve been able to make quite a bit of progress.

Also in Spain, the plummeting water levels at another reservoir have put the Dolmen of Guadalperal, which has been called “The Spanish Stonehenge,” back in the open. The curious stones date to 5,000 B.C. but were thought to be lost forever after being flooded by a large agriculture project in the 1960s.

Further afield, in Iraq, yet another lowered body of water has revealed the surprisingly complete ruins of a settlement dating nearly as far back – this time to the Mittani Empire of over 5,000 years ago.

Parts of Asia have had the unfortunate luck of dealing with both record rains and droughts in recent years. In China the lowered Yangtze River gave up the goods in the form of ancient Buddhist statues.

Back in Italy it’s not just wartime history surfacing. A more significant amount of Nero’s Bridge over the Tiber River in Rome is now visible for the first time in recent memory.

But easily the oldest pieces of history that have been returned to us, arguably by our own hand, have been the dinosaurs tracks in the now exposed bed of the Paluxy River at a Texas state park.

While periods of drought were proceeded by above average rains this year, including in parts of the American West, forecasters say we still have a long way to go to make up the water deficit, and climate trends point towards more artifacts emerging in the future.