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

It turns out it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of assessments and evaluation to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History mentioned Wednesday.

"Believing they have been against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, stated 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 long been affected by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often show a gap bashed by way of either side of every cranium, and had been often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts mentioned Wednesday the victims in the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a sort of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

Whereas normally strung on picket poles using holes bashed by means of them - the frequent practice among the Aztecs and other cultures - consultants say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

Interestingly, there were extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any teeth.

In light of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned individuals ought to most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find something that may very well be in an archaeological context, don't contact it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH," he said.

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque break website revealed proof from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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