Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly women, were 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 had been taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests and evaluation to find out 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 were looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often show a gap bashed via all sides of each skull, and have been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a kind 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 utilizing holes bashed via them - the frequent practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably name archaeologists, not police.

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

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin website.

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

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, serving to the highly effective management the lower lessons and preserve them of their place.

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