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

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

It seems it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of checks and analysis 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 have been a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually show a gap bashed via each side of every skull, and have been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a form of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the powerful control the decrease classes and maintain them in their place.

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