Archaeologists believe the skulls belonged to victims of mass human sacrifice

Jan 28, 2013 10:06 GMT  ·  By

This January's issue of the scientific journal Latin American Antiquity witnessed the publication of a new report explaining how, while digging at an archaeological site in present-day Mexico, a team of researchers ended up unearthing a rather impressive pile of human skulls.

After carrying out various tests, the scientists who found these skulls reached the conclusion that they most likely date back to roughly 1,000 years ago.

Each of these 150 ancient human skulls was connected to either one or two vertebra, Christian Post reports. Furthermore, it looks like most of them used to belong to relatively young men.

The skulls were unearthed in an empty field that used to house a large lake at the time when those people were decapitated.

More precisely, archaeologists say that the ancient lake in whose location these skulls have now been found used to be referred to as Lake Xaltocan.

Interestingly enough, it is the scientists’ belief that these skulls come from victims of a mass human sacrifice which took place in this part of present-day Mexico about one millennium ago.

Should they be right in making these assumptions, then the archaeologists who dug out these skulls could take pride in their having found evidence of the largest mass human sacrifice in ancient Meso-America.

Up until coming across these skulls, researchers were quite convinced that, although a thing of the day in those times, mass human sacrifices were only carried out in major cities.

However, as this pile of skulls suggests, location (i.e. urban vs. rural) was not really that big of an issue when planning religious-motivated killings.

“It's absolutely remarkable to think about this little nothing on the landscape having potentially evidence of the largest mass human sacrifice in ancient Meso-America,” stated Christopher Morehart, an archaeologist currently working with the Georgia State University and co-author of the report published in said journal.