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A brutal summer has caused havoc for many in rural Spain, but one unexpected side-effect of the country's worst drought in decades has delighted archaeologists - the emergence of a prehistoric stone circle in a dam whose waterline has receded.
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Officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal but dubbed the Spanish Stonehenge, the circle of dozens of megalithic stones is believed to date back to 5000 BC.
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It currently sits fully exposed in one corner of the Valdecanas reservoir, in the central province of Caceres, where authorities say the water level has dropped to 28% of capacity.
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"It's a surprise, it's a rare opportunity to be able to access it," said archaeologist Enrique Cedillo from Madrid's Complutense University, one of the experts racing to study the circle before it gets submerged again.
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It was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Since then it has only become fully visible four times.
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Dolmens are vertically arranged stones usually supporting a flat boulder. Although there are many scattered across Western Europe, little is known about who erected them. Human remains found in or near many have led to an often-cited theory that they are tombs.
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Local historical and tourism associations have advocated moving the Guadalperal stones to a museum or elsewhere on dry land.
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Climate change has left the Iberian peninsula at its driest in 1,200 years, and winter rains are expected to diminish further, a study published by the Nature Geoscience journal showed.
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