Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly girls, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of exams and evaluation to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned 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 affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed by means of each side of each cranium, and were usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a form of trophy rack often called 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 utilizing holes bashed by them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any tooth.

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

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

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

That same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage site revealed proof from when a whole lot of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the powerful management the decrease courses and preserve them in their place.

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