Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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 turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of assessments 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 taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed by means of each side of each skull, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the frequent observe among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned folks ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

In 2015, archaeologists found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec destroy site.

That very same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash web site revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the highly effective management the lower classes and maintain them of their place.

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