Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally girls, have 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 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 tests and evaluation to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by means of each side of each cranium, and have been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on picket poles using holes bashed by them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

Curiously, 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 said folks ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec smash site.

That same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque destroy web site revealed proof from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the powerful management the decrease courses and keep them in their place.

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