Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely girls, were 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 looking at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold 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 mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a statement.

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

But experts said Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a type 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 wooden poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the widespread practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people ought to most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he stated.

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

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

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the lower lessons and maintain them in their place.

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