Police discovered 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 discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very chilly case.

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

"Believing they had been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

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

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

Whereas often strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the widespread follow among the many Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

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

"When individuals discover something that might be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage website revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the highly effective control the lower courses and hold them of their place.

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