Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally girls, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed through both sides of each cranium, and have been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a sort of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec spoil web site.

That very same yr, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage site revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the decrease classes and hold them of their place.

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