Police discovered 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 have been looking at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they were taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually present a gap bashed via each side of every cranium, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form 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 often strung on wood poles using holes bashed by them - the common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals should probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash site revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the highly effective management the decrease lessons and keep them of their place.

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