Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally girls, were 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 taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

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

"Believing they have been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a gap bashed by way of either side of each skull, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a type of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While normally strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the frequent apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were more females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any teeth.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he stated.

In 2015, archaeologists found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec wreck website.

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

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the powerful management the lower courses and preserve them in their place.

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