Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely ladies, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

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

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they had been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated 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 stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a hole bashed by means of both sides of every cranium, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the common apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same yr, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage site revealed proof from when a whole lot 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 form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the lower courses and maintain them in their place.

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