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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking 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 determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, said 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 plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a hole bashed by each side of each cranium, and were often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a form 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.

Whereas normally strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by way 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 victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

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

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

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, helping the powerful control the decrease classes and preserve them of their place.

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