Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly ladies, 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 were a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of exams and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they had been a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often known as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed by either side of each skull, and have been usually found 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 show on a form of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the common follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

Curiously, 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 mentioned folks should most likely name archaeologists, not police.

"When people find something that could possibly be in an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH," he mentioned.

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

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

A 2016 examine found that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the powerful control the lower courses and maintain them in their place.

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