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

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been looking at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they have been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a gap bashed by way of each side of each cranium, and were normally found 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 form of trophy rack often called 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 utilizing holes bashed by them - the widespread practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Curiously, there were extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that might be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque destroy website revealed evidence from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the highly effective control the decrease courses and keep them in their place.

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