Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly women, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of exams and analysis to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a hole bashed by way of each side of each cranium, and had been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a sort of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the frequent observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Curiously, there have been extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

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

"When individuals discover something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed proof from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the lower classes and preserve them of their place.

Trending News