Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly girls, had 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 had been a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of tests and evaluation to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by all sides of each skull, and were usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a sort 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 usually strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the common follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

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

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec spoil website.

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil site revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the powerful control the lower courses and maintain them in their place.

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