Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely ladies, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.
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When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to 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 chilly case.
It took a decade of checks and analysis to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past said Wednesday.
A skull found at the archaeological website Templo Mayor sits on show in Mexico Metropolis, Friday, Oct. 5, 2012. Alexandre Meneghini / AP"Believing they were looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said 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 plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed by all sides of each skull, and had been normally present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.
However consultants stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a sort of trophy rack often known 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 using holes bashed through them - the widespread observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, quite than being strung on them.
Curiously, there were extra 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 mentioned people should in all probability name archaeologists, not police.
"When individuals discover one thing that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said.
In 2015, archaeologists found the primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec break website.
That same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed proof from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.
A 2016 study found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, helping the powerful control the decrease classes and preserve them in their place.
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