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

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a very cold case.

It took a decade of exams and evaluation to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been looking at against the law scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, known as INAH, stated in a statement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed by means of all sides of each cranium, and were often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

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

While normally strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed by them - the widespread observe among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, reasonably than being strung on them.

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

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

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

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

That same year, artifacts discovered at the Zultepec-Tecoaque wreck website revealed evidence from when a whole lot of people in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies had been taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, serving to the highly effective management the lower courses and hold them of their place.

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