Police discovered 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 were taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of exams 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 Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

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

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

While normally strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the common follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any teeth.

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

"When folks find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the powerful management the lower courses and maintain them of their place.

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