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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been a crime 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 find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated 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 tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a hole bashed by each side of each skull, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display 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.

While often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common apply among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals should probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

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

A 2016 research found that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the powerful management the lower classes and maintain them in their place.

Trending News