Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally women, have been 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 had been a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to determine 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 had been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed through all sides of every cranium, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the common follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or directly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the highly effective management the decrease classes and keep them of their place.

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