Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally ladies, have 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 had been against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they were taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by both sides of every skull, and have been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort 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.

While normally strung on picket poles using holes bashed by way of them - the widespread observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals should in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed proof from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the powerful control the decrease classes and hold them in their place.

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