Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely ladies, 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 had been 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 evaluation to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they were taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed via each side of every cranium, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the widespread follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Curiously, 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 find something that might be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

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

A 2016 research found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the highly effective management the lower lessons and keep them of their place.

Trending News