Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly girls, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found 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 turns out it was a very cold case.

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

"Believing they were a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area 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 usually present a hole bashed by means of each side of every skull, and have been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a kind 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.

While normally strung on wood poles using holes bashed through them - the common apply among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that could be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

That very same yr, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of people 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 shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the powerful control the decrease courses and preserve them of their place.

Trending News