Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally ladies, have been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years ago.

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

It turns out it was a very cold case.

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

"Believing they were taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town 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 each side of each cranium, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a kind of trophy rack often called a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on picket poles using holes bashed by means of them - the widespread apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were more 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 individuals ought to in all probability call archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that might be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

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

That very same yr, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin web site revealed proof from when tons of of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, serving to the highly effective control the decrease classes and maintain them of their place.

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