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

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

It turns out it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of exams 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, often called INAH, mentioned 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 long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by means of either side of every skull, and had been normally found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a type of trophy rack often called 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 wood poles utilizing holes bashed by means of them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and different cultures - experts say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks should probably call archaeologists, not police.

"When people discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify native authorities or straight the INAH," he said.

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

That very same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage site revealed proof from when a whole bunch of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices focused poor individuals, helping the highly effective management the decrease lessons and hold them in their place.

Trending Information