Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly ladies, 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 were taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of checks and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by way of either side of every cranium, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While normally strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the common practice among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

Curiously, there have been extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any tooth.

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

"When individuals find something that might be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

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

A 2016 research found that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the lower courses and preserve them in their place.

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