Someone called the Iowa caucuses Byzantine.
It is Byzantine.
You have to think of the Iowa caucus system like the electoral vote versus the popular vote. That’s the best widely understood analogy politically speaking you can use.
Between the proportional allocation of state delegates to how they’re awarded by precinct wins it truly is a historically antiquated system. It goes back to agrarian roots of people showing up at the county courthouse and probably very arcane and obscure state voting precedents that may even be holdovers from the time before Iowa was even a state.