Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly girls, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

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

It seems it was a really cold case.

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

"Believing they had been taking a look at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, mentioned in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a hole bashed by each side of every skull, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas normally strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed through them - the frequent apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he stated.

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque break website revealed evidence from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the powerful management the decrease classes and preserve them of their place.

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