Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly girls, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at against the law scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly 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 History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, said 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 long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed via either side of every cranium, and have been usually present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack referred to 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 wooden poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the frequent observe among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, somewhat than being strung on them.

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

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

"When individuals discover one thing that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

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

That very same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil site revealed proof from when a whole lot of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, serving to the highly effective control the decrease lessons and preserve them of their place.

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