Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly ladies, had 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 had been taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed by either side of every cranium, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

While normally strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by way of them - the common apply among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

Apparently, 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 probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that might be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists found the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin website.

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin web site revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the lower lessons and preserve them in their place.

Trending Information