Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely ladies, have been 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 have been looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they had been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually present a hole bashed via each side of every cranium, and had been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas usually strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same year, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil site revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the powerful control the lower classes and maintain them in their place.

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