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

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 turns out it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they had been a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting 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 city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually present a gap bashed by all sides of each skull, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While normally strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were 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 stated folks ought to probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

That very same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash site revealed evidence from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor folks, helping the highly effective control the lower classes and hold them of their place.

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