Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly women, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been taking a look at 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 exams 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 Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually show a gap bashed through each side of every skull, and had been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the common follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals ought to most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that might be in an archaeological context, do not 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 destroy site.

That same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck website revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the powerful control the lower courses and keep them in their place.

Trending Information