Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly girls, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were 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 assessments and evaluation to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they had been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by means of each side of every skull, and have been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a sort 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.

Whereas often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common follow among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

Interestingly, there have been extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

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

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

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

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the highly effective control the lower classes and maintain them in their place.

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