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MEXICO CITY — When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave close to the Guatemalan border, they thought they have been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, and took the bones to the state capital.
It seems it was a really chilly case.
It took a decade of checks and evaluation to find out the skulls have been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past mentioned Wednesday.
“Believing they have been taking a look at a criminal offense scene, investigators collected the bones and began inspecting them in Tuxtla Gutierrez,” the state capital, the institute, generally known as INAH, mentioned in an announcement.
The police in 2012 weren’t being silly; the border space across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been tormented by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico often present a gap bashed by way of both sides of each cranium, and have been often present in ceremonial plazas, not caves.
However specialists mentioned Wednesday the victims within the cave had in all probability been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a form of trophy rack generally known as a “tzompantli.” Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks within the 1520s, and a few Spaniards’ heads even wound up on them.
Whereas often strung on wood poles utilizing holes bashed by way of them — the widespread observe among the many Aztecs and different cultures — specialists say the cave skulls could have rested atop poles, fairly than being strung on them.
Apparently, there have been extra females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any tooth.
In gentle of the cave expertise, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz mentioned folks ought to in all probability name archaeologists, not police.
“When folks discover one thing that might be in an archaeological context, don’t contact it and notify native authorities or immediately the INAH,” he mentioned.