Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, principally girls, were 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 have been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of tests and analysis 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 looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by means of both sides of each cranium, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

Whereas normally strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the widespread practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

Apparently, there were more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any enamel.

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

"When people discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he stated.

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed evidence from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research found that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the highly effective management the decrease courses and maintain them of their place.

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