Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly ladies, 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 have been looking 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 exams and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a gap bashed by both sides of each skull, and were normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wood poles using holes bashed by means of them - the common follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

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

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

"When people find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed evidence from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the decrease classes and preserve them in their place.

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