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

It seems it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of checks 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 History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, stated in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed through either side of each skull, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

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

"When people discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local 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 destroy site.

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

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

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