Police found 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It seems 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 near the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It turns out it was a really 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 Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.

"Believing they were taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, referred to as INAH, said in an announcement.

The police in 2012 weren't being stupid; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been stricken by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico often present a hole bashed via each side of each cranium, and were often found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

But consultants stated Wednesday the victims in the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on display on a type of trophy rack generally known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and some Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wooden poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them - the common apply among the Aztecs and different cultures - specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

In mild of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said individuals ought to most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks find one thing 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 primary trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico Metropolis's Templo Mayor Aztec spoil web site.

That same 12 months, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque damage web site revealed evidence from when hundreds of individuals in a Spanish-led convoy had been captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study discovered that in societies where social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor folks, serving to the powerful control the lower classes and maintain them in their place.

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