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 found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a very cold case.

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

"Believing they were looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually present a hole bashed by means of either side of every cranium, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However consultants stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on picket poles using holes bashed by means of them - the common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When individuals find one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

That same year, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque destroy site revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, helping the highly effective management the lower classes and preserve them in their place.

Trending News