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

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of checks and evaluation to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they had been a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

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

However specialists said Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas often strung on wood poles using holes bashed through them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

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

"When folks find something that could be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or directly the INAH," he stated.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash web site revealed evidence from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, helping the highly effective management the lower courses and hold them of their place.

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