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

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they were 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 tests and analysis to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed through each side of each cranium, and were usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form 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.

Whereas often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the widespread follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks should probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed proof from when a whole lot of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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