Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly ladies, 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 a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of exams and evaluation to determine 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 have been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a gap bashed through each side of every cranium, and have been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack referred to 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 wood poles using holes bashed through them - the common follow among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals find something that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec destroy website.

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil site revealed evidence from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the highly effective management the lower classes and preserve them in their place.

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