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

It seems it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they have been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated in a statement.

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

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

While often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin web site revealed proof from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, serving to the highly effective control the decrease classes and hold them of their place.

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