Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely ladies, have 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 were taking a look at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of checks and evaluation to determine 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 had been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed via each side of every skull, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type of trophy rack referred to as 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 observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks ought to probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he stated.

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

That same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin website revealed proof from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the highly effective management the lower lessons and maintain them in their place.

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