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

It seems it was a really cold case.

It took a decade of exams and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned 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, said in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by means of all sides of every skull, and had been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But experts stated Wednesday the victims within the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a type of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wood poles using holes bashed by them - the frequent apply among the many Aztecs and other cultures - specialists say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

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

"When people discover one thing that may very well be in an archaeological context, do not contact it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he mentioned.

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

That very same 12 months, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed evidence from when lots of of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the powerful management the lower lessons and maintain them of their place.

Trending Information