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

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

It turns out it was a very chilly case.

It took a decade of exams and analysis to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History 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, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed through either side of every cranium, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a kind 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.

While usually strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the widespread follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

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

"When folks discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage site revealed evidence from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the highly effective management the lower lessons and hold them of their place.

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