Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely ladies, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of assessments and analysis to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

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

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed by way of both sides of every cranium, and had been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas usually strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the frequent observe among the many Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or directly the INAH," he stated.

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

That same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, serving to the powerful management the decrease classes and maintain them of their place.

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