A years-long drought can devastate communities and ecosystems, but it can also reveal long-forgotten secrets. Here's how one particular drought uncovered a dark medieval message in the Czech Republic. By August 2018, the Elbe River had lost so much water that it revealed "hunger stones," monuments to history's most devastating droughts that once lay hidden beneath the water line. The hunger stones were placed on the banks of the river in antiquity to record low water levels. They were deliberately placed at the lowest water levels so that they would remain hidden beneath the surface during times of normal rainfall and then emerge during times of drought to serve as a warning. They existed to tell the townsfolk that they were doomed, which they had frankly probably already figured out by that point. In practice they were kind of like a very serious nose thumb from the past.
The authors of a 2013 paper on the subject wrote that one stone in particular, simply called "Hunger Rock," was, quote, "chiseled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history." The stone noted the years of especially bad drought, beginning with 1417, then 1616, 1707, 1746, and 1790. In the 1800s, the stone made note of seven different drought events. But the stone's authors weren't just satisfied with marking the date. They also left messages for future generations. Besides the list of years, the stone has a German engraving that when translated into English reads,
"If you see me, weep."
There are more than a dozen hunger stones in and around the Czech town of Decin, which is close to the German border. They've become something of a tourist attraction, which is probably not what those suffering people from the past really had in mind. The stones were meant to convey a dire warning to those unlucky enough to witness the sorts of low water levels that once meant widespread suffering. In antiquity, drought not only threatened the harvest, it also made it difficult to travel on the river, which meant that the people living along the banks could no longer make ends meet. One stone in Germany reads,
"If you will again see this stone, so you will weep, so shallow the water was in the year 1417."
Not all the stones are doom and gloom, though. One in the Czech Republic reads,
"Don't cry, girl, don't fret. When it's dry, just spray your field wet."
But without modern amenities, it's unclear what tools the people of the time would've used to spray their fields.
The reappearance of the hunger stones certainly sends a sinister message. But there are even other more ominous things that the receding water is revealing in the Elbe, which is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. Where it flows through Germany, people have uncovered unexploded World War II munitions, including grenades, landmines, and other explosives, which have been corroding beneath the surface for several decades now. Keep watching the video to learn more about the drought that revealed a dark medieval message!
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