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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of exams and analysis to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they have been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed by means of both sides of every cranium, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

While often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the frequent apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover one thing that might be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

That same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin web site revealed evidence from when a whole lot of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been 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 folks, helping the highly effective management the lower classes and preserve them in their place.

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