Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely girls, 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 looking 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 checks and evaluation to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they have been looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally present a gap bashed through each side of each skull, and were often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a kind 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.

While often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the frequent follow among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, moderately than being strung on them.

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

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated individuals ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same yr, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque destroy website revealed evidence from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor individuals, helping the highly effective control the lower lessons and hold them in their place.

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