Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely women, had 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 have been taking a look at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they have been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by way of both sides of every skull, and had been usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a type of trophy rack often known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the widespread observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people ought to most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When people find one thing that could be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or straight 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 very same yr, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage web site revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the powerful control the decrease classes and maintain them of their place.

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