Hunger stones

From Sinister 'Hunger Stones' With Dire Warnings Have Been Surfacing in Europe by Peter Dockrill.

Nothing is new under the sun. What goes around comes around. We try and make out the present as an apocalyptic time but the olde earth has seen it all before and people of the past have left us messages for the future.

A glacier retreats in Greenland and uncovers Viking settlements from 1100. Some conclude that the world is spiraling into a new Hades. Others observe that all this can mean is that the climate must have once been warm enough to sustain settlement in Greenland a thousand year ago before the most recent Little Ice Age.

Somewhat similarly, a drought in Europe similar to that in 1975 (I remember it) is now, for some, a harbinger of the worst forecasts of AGW. For others, it is part of a long cycle of climate changes which have occurred before and will occur again.

As Europe wilts in the sweltering, record-breaking harshness of summer 2018, strange things are happening.

Mysterious outlines of ancient societies have revealed themselves across the seared landscape, but it's not just traces of ghostly architecture resurfacing. So too are grim words of warning.

Inscribed boulders known as 'hunger stones' are reappearing in Czechia after a prolonged drought afflicting Central Europe, AP reports.

These hunger stones traditionally sit below the water line of the Elbe River as it flows through the town of Děčín in the country's north, but with water levels hitting record lows in Europe, the rocks and the words carved into them have been exposed once more.

In the current conditions, more than a dozen of the hunger stones can now be seen around Děčín, recording the low water levels of years and centuries long ago – "chiselled with the years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history," as described by the authors of a 2013 study on historic Czech droughts.

The oldest and most famous of these landmarks, known simply as "Hunger Rock" according to Děčín's tourist guide, contains an inscription that dates back to 1616, which reads: "Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine" (If you see me, weep).

While the oldest legible inscription on this particular Děčín hunger stone is from 1616, the rock commemorates numerous droughts going as far back as 1417.

A fellow hunger stone in Germany records the conditions that year in no happier terms: "If you will again see this stone, so you will weep, so shallow the water was in the year 1417."

Others say things like "We cried – We cry – And you will cry", and "Who once saw me, he cried. Whoever sees me now will cry".

Across the centuries, we speak to one another.