Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally girls, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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 turns out it was a very chilly case.

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

"Believing they had been looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a gap bashed via all sides of each skull, and have been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack often known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the common observe among the many Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals find one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin website revealed proof from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the highly effective management the decrease classes and keep them in their place.

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