Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems the victims, principally ladies, 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 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 tests and evaluation to determine the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were looking at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated in a statement.

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

However experts said Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on show on a form of trophy rack often known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed via them - the widespread apply among the many Aztecs and different cultures - consultants say the cave skulls might have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

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

In gentle of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated folks ought to probably name archaeologists, not police.

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

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

That same 12 months, artifacts found on the Zultepec-Tecoaque break web site revealed evidence from when a whole lot of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy have been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

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

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