Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally women, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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

It turns out 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 National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, said in a press release.

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

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

While usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed via them - the frequent observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that might be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

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

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the lower courses and hold them in their place.

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