Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally 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 had been taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned 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 stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by all sides of every skull, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed 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.

Whereas often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed through them - the common apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover one thing that might be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

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

That same yr, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck site revealed proof from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the powerful management the decrease courses and preserve them in their place.

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