Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly women, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were 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 exams and evaluation to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a press release.

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

But experts stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a form of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the widespread apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals find something that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage website revealed proof from when a whole bunch 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 folks, serving to the highly effective control the decrease courses and hold them in their place.

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