150 Skulls Found At 'Crime Scene' Revealed To Be 1,000-Year-Old Sacrificial Victims

Mexican authorities believe the pile of skulls found by the police in a cave near the Guatemalan border could be more than 1,000 years old.

When the skulls, which were more than 150 in number, were found in the year 2012, authorities initially believed they were looking at a crime scene and sent the bones to the state capital for investigation.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History released the results of the tests and analysis Wednesday, a decade after the discovery was made. The skulls were said to be of sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the Associated Press reported.

“Believing they were looking at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and started examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez,” the state capital's institute, known as INAH, said in a statement, the Guardian reported.

The police said the skulls were found near the border area around the town of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state, which has long been known for violence and immigrant trafficking.

Previously, such remains had been found with a hole bashed through each side of every skull. They were also usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves. Experts said 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.”

According to the experts, the cave skulls were likely rested atop poles, rather than strung on wooden poles using holes bashed through them — a common practice among the Aztecs and other cultures.

The test results showed there were more females than males among the victims, and none of them had any teeth.

In 2020, the INAH made another discovery -- a section of a tower under the ruins of Mexico City's Templo Mayor, which contained 119 skulls from men, women and children. The Aztecs ritually sacrificed people to appease their gods by placing the heads of their dead on enormous, cylindrical racks.

At the time, it was reported the skulls date back more than 500 years.

"The Huei Tzompantli is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive archaeological finds of recent years in our country," Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, Mexico City's culture secretary, said in a statement at the time, according to Business Insider. "It is an important testament to the power and greatness achieved by Mexico-Tenochtitlán."