Police discovered 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 found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been looking at 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 tests and analysis to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

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

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

However consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack generally known as 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 wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the frequent apply among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or straight the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That very same yr, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck site revealed evidence from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, helping the powerful management the decrease classes and preserve them in their place.

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