POLICE FOUND 150 SKULLS AT A “CRIME SCENE” IN MEXICO TURN OUT TO BE FROM AD 900

Fri 29 April 2022:

Usually, the accused is apprehended at a crime scene. However, when Mexican authorities discovered a mound of roughly 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they had no idea what it would turn out to be.

Are you curious as to what it was? To cut to the chase and finally break it to you, it was the remains of sacrifice victims slaughtered between AD 900 and 1200, according to the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

In a statement, the institute, which is also known as INAH, said, “Believing they were looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital.”

It took around a decade to carry out the tests and analysis to come to the conclusion.

Experts said Wednesday the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated and the skulls put on display on a kind of trophy rack known as a “tzompantli.” Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and some Spaniards’ heads even wound up on them.

While usually strung on wooden poles using holes bashed through them – the common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures – experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, rather than being strung on them.

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

These victims in the cave may have been ritually decapitated. Later, the skulls were put for display on a kind of trophy rack, which is known as a ‘tzompantli’, the experts said on Wednesday.

The experts recommended calling the archaeological experts in such cases and not police.

“When people find something that could be in an archaeological context, don’t touch it and notify local authorities or directly the INAH,” archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz told AP.

In 2015, archaeologists found the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor Aztec ruin site.

That same year, artifacts found at the Zultepec-Tecoaque ruin site revealed evidence from when hundreds of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 study found that in societies where social hierarchies were taking shape, ritual human sacrifices targeted poor people, helping the powerful control the lower classes and keep them in their place.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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