Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been 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 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 said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by each side of each cranium, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wood poles using holes bashed by way of them - the widespread follow among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants 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 expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed evidence from when a whole lot of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the powerful control the decrease courses and preserve them in their place.

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