Despite the news that the River Rhine is in a crisis due to “climate change” it has happened before, and many times. There are rocks in European rivers called Hunger Stones where people carved messages to mark the depth of the pain in the droughts. There are historical records of the Rhine drying up in spots so badly that people could walk across it with dry feet. In 1540 wells ran dry that had never run out of water. The whole decade was horrible, and in 1835 in Transylvania people were so hungry they ate dead cats and dogs.

History is being actively wiped out because it never serves the narrative. Megadroughts were longer and deeper in the last 2000 years. The whole decade of the 1530s was filled with drought but the worst drought was 1540.

Hell on Earth: the European drought of 1540

Patty Jansen

In the summer of 1540, the people searched ever more desperate for drinking water. Even a meter and a half under the normal water table in Switzerland was not a drop of water to be found, noted Hans Salat at the time. Spring and upwellings that had never faltered […]