Also we struggle to create a ground level understanding of how these cultures behaved. We have lots of snapshots that we can composit into something cohesive but finer details tend to be lost.

A weird example of this is a site in Germany with direct evidence of cannibalism to such a large degree that it’s bizarre and doesn’t match up quite well with models of the cultures in the region at that time. That is until some folks remembered that these are in fact still just people so there’s a growing idea that this site may very well represent a cult that emerged from a time of struggle possibly famine.