Originally thought to be the remnants of gang killings, dozens of skulls found in a cave in southern Mexico are now believed to be from sacrificial killings more than 1,000 years ago.
In 2012, the authorities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas entered a dark cave and confronted a ghastly sight: about 150 skulls sprawled across the ground, all with missing teeth and shattered bits of bone.
The police started an investigation, believing it was a crime scene of migrants killed near the border with Guatemala, where gang violence is commonplace.
Indeed, it was a crime scene. Just not one that occurred recently.
Last week, 10 years after the discovery, the authorities said in a statement that they had determined the skulls were from sacrificial killings between A.D. 900 and 1200.
“We have already learned a lot of information,” Javier Montes de Paz, an archaeologist who analyzed the bones, said in a news conference on April 11. “But it’s also important to note: What were those craniums doing in that cave?”
Researchers at the National Institute of Anthropology and History analyzed marks on the bones and determined that the deaths had happened centuries ago. Such marks would appear only after “a lot, a lot of time” had passed, Mr. Montes de Paz said.
The researchers found that the victims had been beheaded, that most of the bones were from female victims, and that all were missing teeth, though it was unclear if they had been extracted before or after death, Mr. Montes de Paz said.
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The researchers also found the skeletal remains of three infants.
The pre-Hispanic bone pile in the Comalapa cave was likely a tzompantli — an altar for worshiping gods that would look like a modern-day trophy rack, with skulls placed on aligned wooden sticks, Mr. Montes de Paz said. Similar practices were common in Maya, Aztec and other Mesoamerican civilizations, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
The wooden material “disappeared over time and could have collapsed the skulls,” Mr. Montes de Paz added.
Investigators in the cave also found aligned wooden sticks, another sign of a tzompantli, according to a statement from the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
