Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, 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 were against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they have been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, stated in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed via all sides of each skull, and had been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a form of trophy rack often known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles using holes bashed by means of them - the widespread apply among the many Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck web site revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, helping the powerful management the decrease courses and keep them of their place.

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