Hard to believe that they ate 10,000 animals at one feast.
Seems more likely that the location was used many times to feast.
Don’t know that there were enough people living there to eat that much at one time.
But that is just me speculating.
beat me to it! This assertion is a bit far-fetched.
I think you are correct.
I thought was an awful lot of food. Were any villages in that time and place anywhere near that big?
“Hard to believe that they ate 10,000 animals at one feast.”
It’s possible. It might well have been a feast of great significance: a treaty ending a war, formerly warring peoples bound together by a marriage alliance, etc.
Feasting in the past was usually a much more time consuming affair than just our “Thanksgiving Day.”
In Roman times the Celtic people were known to the Romans for what archaeologists call “competitive feasting.” Wanna-be leaders had to outdo other competitors and it takes a lot of food and gifts if your competitor is skilled in acquisition.
It happened in North America too where giant earth ovens were found that were used to cook large quantities of food at once. In the northwest there were potlaches in historic times that were huge events, with food, gifts and captured slaves given away.
The practice in many cases is how some individuals in society gained prestige- by providing copious amounts of food and gifts to people they wanted to impress by their generosity. They did it abundantly to prove what good providers or useful allies they could be- who would follow a stingy clan leader?
In the ancient past the aspiring leader had to give things away with no strings attached and may even give everything away to win hearts and minds- but it paid off in the long run. The difference between then and now is that aspiring leaders had to give their own stuff away, not someone else’ as politicians do today, so the person most likely to become a leader would be an excellent hunter or trader, in other words, he would have real merit and not just a lying press.
Here’s a paper on competitive feasting:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318348427_The_Origins_of_Entrepreneurship_and_the_Market_Process_An_Archaeological_Assessment_of_Competitive_Feasting_Trade_and_Social_Cooperation