MSN – The Washington Post
By Ishaan Tharoor
August 30, 2022
In the age of climate change, our past intrudes upon the present. Last week, receding water levels in a Serbian stretch of the Danube, Europe’s second-largest river, surfaced a flotilla of Nazi-era German warships that were still packed with ammunition and unexploded ordnance. They were exposed at a time when Europe is experiencing what appears to be the worst dry spell in half a millennium, with two-thirds of the continent under some form of drought warning.
Other ruins and wrecks are popping up as waterways shrink. A submerged 1st century A.D. Roman bridge possibly constructed under the orders of Emperor Nero emerged from the Tiber River last month; further to the north, out of the depths of Italy’s tourist-clogged Lake Como, emerged a 100,000-year-old skull of a deer and the ancient remains of lions, hyenas and rhinos.