Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely women, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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

It seems it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of checks 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 said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated 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 affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed via both sides of each skull, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts said Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a kind of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the common observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

Curiously, there have been more females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

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

"When individuals find one thing that might be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin website.

That same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed proof from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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