Police discovered 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 close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed by way of each side of every skull, and have been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas usually strung on picket poles using holes bashed by them - the frequent practice among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks should in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he stated.

In 2015, archaeologists found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec destroy website.

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

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the highly effective control the decrease lessons and maintain them in their place.

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