Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, mostly women, have 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 a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to find out the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they were taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated 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 plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed by both sides of each skull, and have been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But specialists said Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a form of trophy rack 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 normally strung on wood poles using holes bashed by means of them - the common observe among the Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said folks ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin website.

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque smash website revealed proof from when lots of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the powerful control the decrease lessons and maintain them in their place.

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