Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly girls, 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 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 exams and analysis to find out 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 taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated in a press release.

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

However consultants said 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 some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the common observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec wreck website.

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

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the highly effective management the decrease lessons and keep them in their place.

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