When Mexican police officers came across a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border a decade ago, they thought they were looking at a crime scene.
In a way they were right, but it turns out it was a very cold case, dating back a millennium.
It took 10 years of testing and analysis to determine that the toothless skulls of men and women came from victims killed between AD 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday.
“Investigators believed they were looking at a crime scene, collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez,” the state capital, the institute known as INAH, said in a statement.
The police in 2012 weren’t stupid; The border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and human trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull mounds in Mexico usually show a hole punched through each side of each skull, and were usually found in ceremonial sites, not caves.
But experts said on Wednesday the victims in the cave were likely ritually decapitated and the skulls displayed on a type of trophy stand known as a “tzompantli”.
Spanish conquistadors wrote of seeing such horrid shelves in the 1520s, and some Spaniards even landed their heads on them.
There are more sacrificial skulls of women than men. Reuters/Chiapas Attorney
The skulls were on a display known as “Tzompantli”. AP/Alexandre Meneghini
The Zompantli in Comalapa Cave in Chiapas, Mexico.INAH
While cave skulls are usually strung on wooden poles with holes – common practice among Aztec and other cultures – experts say cave skulls may have rested on poles rather than being strung on them.
Interestingly, there were more women than men among the victims, and none of them had teeth.
Given the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably call archaeologists, not the police.
“If people find anything that might have an archaeological context, do not touch it and notify local authorities or INAH directly,” he said.
With mail wires