Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally ladies, 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 had been looking 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 assessments and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, mentioned in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually present a hole bashed by means of all sides of every skull, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

While usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed by way of them - the common follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, slightly than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that might be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he said.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed proof from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the powerful management the decrease classes and hold them of their place.

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