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

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

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of tests and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as 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 affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by both sides of each cranium, and were often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a type of trophy rack often 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 way of them - the frequent observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might 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 teeth.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks should in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

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

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the powerful control the lower lessons and hold them of their place.

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