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

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

It turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of exams and evaluation to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they had been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, stated in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed via either side of every skull, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the frequent observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

Interestingly, there were more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

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

"When folks find something that might be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck website revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the highly effective management the lower lessons and maintain them of their place.

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