Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly girls, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they were 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 checks and analysis to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed via all sides of each cranium, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the frequent observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When people find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

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

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the powerful control the lower classes and hold them in their place.

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