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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they had been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed by means of either side of every cranium, and had been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack often 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 wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the widespread apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he stated.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque destroy website revealed proof from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the powerful control the decrease lessons and keep them of their place.

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