Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely women, have 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 had been taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started 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 plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a hole bashed via either side of every skull, and have been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a form of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles using holes bashed through them - the widespread apply among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

Curiously, there were 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 stated individuals should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he stated.

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

That same yr, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed proof from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the highly effective control the lower courses and keep them of their place.

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