Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely women, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

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 turns out it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of checks and analysis to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a press release.

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

However consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a sort of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on wood poles using holes bashed through them - the frequent practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec wreck website.

That very same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed evidence 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, helping the powerful management the decrease courses and keep them in their place.

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