Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally women, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

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

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

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed via either side of every cranium, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a kind 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 often strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by way of them - the widespread practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals should probably call archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil web site revealed evidence from when a whole lot of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the highly effective management the decrease classes and maintain them in their place.

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