Mexico Police Thought 150 Skulls Found in Cave Were Part of Crime Scene but Turned out to Be Sacrificial Remains From AD 900

Police in Mexico had unearthed a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border. At first, the Mexican police thought they were looking at a crime scene, taking the bones to the capital of Chiapas state.

However, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said Wednesday that the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between AD 900 and 1200, The Guardian reported.

The INAH noted that it took a decade of tests and analysis to determine that the skulls brought to Tuxtla Gutierrez in 2012 were sacrificial victims.

Experts said the victims in the cave had probably been ritually decapitated, and the skulls were put on display as a kind of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about the said racks in the 1520s, with some Spaniards' heads ending up in the same rack.

It was common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures, with experts saying that the cave skulls may have rested atop poles rather than being strung on them.

Typically, the Mexica expertly decapitated victims and carved standardized holes in the skulls' sides so they could be arranged on wooden poles and posts into a rack called the tzompantli, which held hundreds or even thousands of skulls.

Skulls Discovered in Mexico Were Sacrificial Remains

There were reportedly more women than men among the sacrificial victims, and none of them had any teeth. In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz said people should probably call archaeologists and not the police, Washington Post reported.

Montes de Paz noted that when people find something that could be in an archeological context, they should not touch it and notify local authorities or the INAH.

Archaeological evidence seemed to suggest that human sacrifice was indeed a regular aspect of Aztec culture and religious practices. But historians and archaeologists said the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the terrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture.

The INAH has already confirmed the existence of tzompantli. In 2015, INAH archaeologists discovered and excavated the remains of a skull rack and one of the towers underneath a colonial period house on the street that runs Mexico City's cathedral.

Aztec Culture of Sacrificial Remains

According to Science News, much of the Templo Mayor survived to be discovered. The Templo Mayor was the main temple of the Mexica in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City.

The Mexica people had built it in seven phases between 1325 and 1521, corresponding to the reign of a king. The Spanish destroyed the temple's final phases, with the smaller temples from earlier reigns were paved over but left relatively not ruined.

Those ruins are now part of the Templo Mayor Museum. However, many structures surrounding the ruins remained hidden beneath the colonial city, now the modern megalopolis.

Human sacrifice was mainly an important practice in Mesoamerica, with many of the region's cultures having believed that human sacrifice nourished gods. Most cultures that practiced human sacrifice include Maya and the Mexica.

They believed that without human sacrifice, the sun would stop rising, and the world would end. They also believed that sacrificial victims earned a special "honored place" in the afterlife.

Social scientists noted that costly offerings and painful rituals, such as bloodletting ceremonies, can help define and strengthen group identity.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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