Egyptian pyramid builders consumed 4,000 pounds of meat daily

Building an Egyptian pyramid required plenty of protein. Residents of the Nile Delta who came for work were fed a meat-heavy diet to keep them nourished, reports LiveScience. In an exploration of the enormous amount of resources needed to sustain those who built Pharaoh Menkaure’s pyramid, LiveScience discusses new findings by researchers around a workers’ town located a quarter-mile south of the Sphinx. The researchers estimated that around 4,000 pounds of meat from cattle, sheep, and goats was gathered every day to feed the town’s workers, and that maintaining such a large herd would have required a massive grazing area — one about the size of modern-day Los Angeles.