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Hunger Stones: Inscribed Stones Indicating Drought Conditions

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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'Hunger stones' are inscribed rocks that mark water levels of historical concern, 'surfacing' when water levels fall far enough.

I cannot locate any similar use of inscribed stones outside the Elbe River area, but it wouldn't surprise me if similar marking or indexing of historically stressful conditions can be demonstrated to have occurred elsewhere.

I find no mention of such hunger stones on FTMB, even though I can locate references to them dating back circa 5 years.
 
Old Stone Drought Warning Resurfaces in Europe: 'When You See Me, Cry'
Old stones bearing ominous messages have resurfaced in a river in Central Europe, according to news reports.

Over the course of centuries, Europeans marked low water levels during droughts by carving lines and dates into boulders along the Elbe River, which runs from the Czech Republic into Germany. The idea was that if water levels dipped low enough to reveal an old carving, it would signal to locals that dry, hungry times — similar to those experienced in the marked year — were coming. Over a dozen of these "hunger stones" have reappeared in the Elbe this year, amid a record-setting European drought, the Associated Press reported Aug. 23. ...

And the stones' warnings aren't wrong. Agence France-Presse reported that northern Europe's current drought has not only brought with it record-setting temperatures and wildfires but also significant threats to local food production. ...

While research indicates that climate change will exacerbate droughts in Europe — and make them more frequent around the world — these stones reveal how dangerous these sorts of events were when they occurred in previous centuries.

The oldest stone carving to emerge was carved in 1616 and is considered the oldest hydrologic landmark in Central Europe, according to the AP.

It "bears a chiseled inscription in German," the AP reported, "that says, 'when you see me, cry.'"

SOURCE: https://www.livescience.com/63443-drought-stones-warning-europe.html
 
I've seen the opposite in a city in Hungary where the high water level of a catastrophic flood is marked on walls.
 
Similar things happening right now in the US. This is a catastrophic story if true. But it sounds very plausible:

I followed the discussion for a while on the twitter link you gave. Most of the general information is correct; most of the details are wrong in a pattern which exaggerates the drama. Lake Mead is not losing 8 inches of water a day, if the official sources are to be believed.

There has never been enough water in the Colorado river to satisfy all the claims of the legal users. Only now when alternative aquifer water sources have been nearly used up, have the legal rights to so much Colorado river cubic feet of water been seriously examined. When I lived in Arizona in the 1980s, the different states were suing each other and the Federal government over water rights. So, this is an old problem.
 
When I was 30 years younger I had a colleague who had studied geohydrology and had later switched to IT. He did his masters in the Vegas area. Already then, he told, it was common knowledge the aquifers were being depleted, but no one did anything about it.
 
When I was 30 years younger I had a colleague who had studied geohydrology and had later switched to IT. He did his masters in the Vegas area. Already then, he told, it was common knowledge the aquifers were being depleted, but no one did anything about it.
The Invisible Hand (of collective economics and capitalism) is steady on the steering wheel.

In many of the western US states, water, timber, oil, coal, and different mineral rights can all be sold separately from the actual land. In Arizona, several cities, such as Scottsdale, had been quietly buying up the water rights to ranches further north.
 
Is Hunger Stone a translation of an original name? Or a modern coining?
 
Is Hunger Stone a translation of an original name? Or a modern coining?

The use of hunger stones seems to be original and confined to ethnic Germanic areas of central Europe, where they were called "hungerstein." A list of known hunger stones can be accessed at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone

Traces of cautionary inscriptions about low river levels carved into / onto such stones are attributed as dating back at least as far as the 15th century.
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."
https://www.sciencealert.com/sinist...ng-european-heatwave-czech-drought-elbe-decin
 
I cannot locate any similar use of inscribed stones outside the Elbe River area, but it wouldn't surprise me if similar marking or indexing of historically stressful conditions can be demonstrated to have occurred elsewhere.
This is almost completely the opposite of the 'Hunger Stones' that you mentioned - but they are inscribed stones warning future generations about dangers that might otherwise be forgotten.

According to the article: "Modern research has shown that without written records, it takes just about three generations to lose the memory of a disaster."

Century-Old ‘Tsunami Stones’ Saved Lives In The Tohoku Earthquake Of 2011​

From Forbes.com here.
 
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