Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally women, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to 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 chilly case.

It took a decade of tests and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they had been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, stated 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 usually present a hole bashed through either side of every cranium, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack generally 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 picket poles using holes bashed by way of them - the widespread follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found at 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 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the powerful control the lower courses and hold them in their place.

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