The Danube River is being affected by drought. The decrease in flow, caused by the combination of factors such as climate change, high temperatures and lack of rainfall, has affected navigation, agriculture, energy production and the biodiversity of one of Europe’s river arteries.
This event has left shocking images, since the extreme drought is causing the appearance of land in areas where water had always predominated, empty ports and nuclear power plants on the verge of closure in a good part of the ten countries through which the river passes.
However, the lowering of the water level has also left the appearance of archaeological remains and a series of historical finds that were underwater. And the reduction in flow has allowed buried history to re-emerge after more than eight decades.
Ships from World War II appear under the Danube
The latest heat wave that has hit Europe has left an unprecedented decrease in the flow of the Danube River. However, thanks to this, several vestiges that were hidden under water for decades have appeared. Specifically, German warships sunken during the withdrawal of Nazi forces in the fall of 1944, unexploded explosives and the fossil remains of a mammoth have begun to appear along the different sections of the river.
In the case of ships and bombs, these have been found in Serbia and Hungary, while mammoth fossils have been observed in Bulgaria. “For archaeologists, these moments are extremely valuable because nature briefly reveals an object that remains hidden under the Danube most of the time,” explained Pavel Popov, a worker at the Pleven Regional Historical Museum.
Remains of a mammoth appear
On the other hand, on the Bulgarian bank of the Danube, several residents located fossil remains belonging to a woolly mammoth. Thanks to the work of the specialists who inspected the site, it has been learned that the remains correspond to the lower jaw, two tusks, a shoulder blade and a bone piece that could be a rib.
For this reason, the director of the Regional Museum of History, Nikolay Nenov, has highlighted the discovery as an important step for science: “I would not call it sensational, but any discovery of such ancient remains is very important for science.”
River transport is paralyzed
The extreme drop in flow has caused numerous vessels to be paralyzed. In Bulgaria, the lack of water has caused several freight and tourist boats to become stranded at different points along the 470 kilometers of the stretch that crosses the country.
For its part, in Slovakia the flow has also generated problems since values below 725 cubic meters have been recorded, levels that have left many ships docked. In addition, these countries have been joined by Serbia, where river transport has also been reduced since barges can only carry part of the cargo.
