Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, largely girls, were ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were against the law 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 analysis to determine the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical past said Wednesday.

"Believing they were a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began analyzing them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, stated in a statement.

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

However consultants said Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a form of trophy rack referred to as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

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

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

In mild of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people ought to probably name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That very same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed evidence from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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