Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally women, had 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 crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests 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 said Wednesday.

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

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed via both sides of every cranium, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a type of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by way of them - the widespread observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck web site revealed evidence from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the powerful management the decrease lessons and hold them in their place.

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