Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally girls, 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 have been against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of exams 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 taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting 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 silly; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually show a gap bashed by way of either side of every cranium, and were often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack 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 picket poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the common practice among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck web site revealed evidence from when a whole lot of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the powerful control the decrease courses and keep them of their place.

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