Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally girls, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been 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 tests and analysis to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated 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 lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a hole bashed by way of all sides of every cranium, and were normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a sort of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas usually strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the widespread observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals should probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

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

That same yr, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque break website revealed evidence from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, helping the powerful control the lower classes and maintain them in their place.

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