Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely girls, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated 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, generally known as INAH, stated 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 cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed through all sides of every cranium, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a form of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed through them - the widespread practice among the many Aztecs and other 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 many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks should probably name archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck web site revealed proof from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies the place social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, helping the powerful management the lower lessons and keep them of their place.

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