Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, had 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 had been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really chilly case.

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

"Believing they had been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by both sides of every cranium, and had been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a sort 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 normally strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by them - the frequent practice among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

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

"When folks find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not 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 spoil site.

That same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash site revealed proof from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the powerful management the decrease classes and preserve them of their place.

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