Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly women, had been 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 had been looking 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 assessments and evaluation to determine the skulls have been 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, generally known as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around 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 normally present a hole bashed by either side of each skull, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a sort of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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