Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, largely women, were 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 have been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very chilly 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 Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they were a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, said in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by all sides of every cranium, and have been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a kind of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas usually strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the common follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

Apparently, there have been extra females than males among the victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned people should probably call archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck website revealed proof from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 examine discovered that in societies where social hierarchies were taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the highly effective management the decrease courses and maintain them of their place.

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