Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were taking a look at a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of assessments 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 stated Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a gap bashed by each side of each skull, and had been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the widespread observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he stated.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage website revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, serving to the powerful management the decrease courses and maintain them of their place.

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