Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally women, were 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 were taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they were a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, stated in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; 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 usually show a gap bashed through all sides of every cranium, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack generally known 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 by them - the widespread apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were 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 mentioned folks ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that might be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil web site revealed evidence from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, serving to the powerful control the decrease lessons and preserve them of their place.

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