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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by way of each side of every skull, and have 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 put on show on a type 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 normally strung on picket poles using holes bashed by means of them - the common observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

Interestingly, there have been extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any teeth.

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

"When individuals discover one thing that might be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the principle trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec smash web site.

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

A 2016 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the powerful management the lower classes and preserve them in their place.

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