Concrete archaeological evidence is tremendously unlikely to ever surface. The afforementioned statement is a plausible conjecture based on what circumstantial evidence is apparent weighed against what we consider reasonable human behavior at the time. The purpose of the statement isn’t proof, but to be an academically sound conclusion to a mystery a lot of people take very seriously.

It would be just as foolish to declare the Jesus of the bible absolutely couldn’t exist as it would be to declare that he absolutely did.

On top of that the general price increase over the last 25 years has come with considerable increases in set intricacy, piece count, and variety to both piece shapes and themes. I love to dunk on corporate price gouging but i really struggle to fault LEGO. I personally use “a person can comfortably buy LEGO as toys for their children” as my personal litmus for what a good wage should be; they’re pretty solid for maintaining a price/value ratio and Americans should all be making at least 150k/year by now even out in the boonies, just deduct it right out of the fortune 500s margins