Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely girls, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests and evaluation to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed through both sides of each skull, and have been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the frequent observe among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native 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 ruin website.

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash site revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, helping the powerful control the decrease lessons and keep them of their place.

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