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

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had 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 checks and analysis to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in a statement.

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

But specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form 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 often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

That very same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck site revealed proof from when a whole lot of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the powerful management the lower lessons and maintain them of their place.

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