Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely girls, were 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 were a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by means of all sides of each skull, and have been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

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

Interestingly, there were more females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

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

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

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec damage website.

That very same year, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed proof from when tons of of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the decrease classes and keep them in their place.

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