Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally 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 had been against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of assessments 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 had been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed by means of either side of every cranium, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show 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 usually strung on picket poles using holes bashed via them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals ought to most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals find one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same year, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed evidence from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the highly effective management the lower courses and hold them of their place.

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