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

It turns out it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to find out the skulls were 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 criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, mentioned in a press release.

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

However experts said Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a form of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles using holes bashed by way of them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

That same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck website revealed proof from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the highly effective management the decrease courses and keep them in their place.

Trending News