Water water everywhere sometimes

Even though droughts and climate change are bad for farmers and grocers and people who like to eat, there is always someone who does OK in a crisis situation.

For example: in Europe right now, there are severe weather changes that are ruining crops and costing everyone. But it's to the benefit of archeologists, because loss of water in lakes is giving them access to relics previously unseen.

Case in point: In Spain, there is a megalithic monument called the Dolmen de Guadalperal. It's 7,000 years old, an arrangement of some 144 stones piled up as high as six feet, all in a circular open space.  It's in the province of Cáceres.  And now, blame the drought for crop failures, but this monument that was underwater and out of our view is completely exposed. 

Some call it the “Spanish Stonehenge.” It's sort of a mini-version of the English original, and now it's possible to see it without swimming up to it for the first time in 50 years.

Angel Castaño, president of the local cultural association,  says, “I had seen parts of it peeking out from the water before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in full. It’s spectacular because you can appreciate the entire complex for the first time in decades.”

Castaños lives in the village of Peraleda de la Mata, and he has known and appreciated this dolmen (that's a megalithic tomb with one large flat stone laid on upright ones, found mainly in Britain and France, according to my Merriam-Webster) all of his days, and the drought has allowed him to get a closer look.  

This particular dolmen wasn't always under the water. It was a German archaeologist by the name of Hugo Obermaier who first excavated it in the mid-1920s. It was left in all its glory until 1963, when some brilliant Spaniards decided to flood it out to build a reservoir and dam on the spot.

Today, people would be able to say, Hold on a minute! and stop people from covering up history in the name of progress.

“You couldn’t believe how many authentic archaeological and historic gems are submerged under Spain’s man-made lakes,” says Bueno Ramirez, a specialist in prehistory at the University of Alcalá.

Something similar was done here in Baltimore County, where the entire town of Warren was flooded out to make room for the Loch Raven Reservoir.  Warren did not have age-old monuments, but there were houses and a mill where people worked.  All that was moved out in 1922 to make room for 23 billion gallons of Gunpowder River water, which is what I am about to drink from right now. See ya tomorrow.