Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly women, have been 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 had been taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they have been taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, stated in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a hole bashed through all sides of every cranium, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type 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 normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the widespread observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should probably name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

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

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the lower lessons and preserve them of their place.

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