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

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed via each side of each skull, and had been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a kind 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.

While usually strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the widespread practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that might be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists found the primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec destroy website.

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed evidence from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the powerful management the lower lessons and hold them of their place.

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