You forgot the bit which told of how the Aztecs [1] became to be the power they were back in the day: by a combination of military conquest and, to a lesser ext

You forgot the bit which told of how the Aztecs [1] became to be the power they were back in the day: by a combination of military conquest and, to a lesser extent, trade. Before the Aztecs became the power they were there were the Toltecs, another militaristic culture which lost steam and got overrun by Chichimec tribes. It was from those tribes that the Aztecs rose, seemingly out of a group of a few thousand Chichimecs which had been forced out to a group of islands after sacrificing a princess from a neighbouring tribe. They gradually rose in power after conquering a few cities on the mainland and forming alliances with other tribes. First under Montezuma I and later under his successor they 'evolved an ideology of themselves as a chosen people destined to conquer' according to [2]. This ideology served them well and lead them to become the dominant power in what is now Mexico until they came into contact with another group of people who saw themselves as conquerors, better known in their own language as conquistadores [3]. In other words, those Aztecs with their pyramids and systems of agriculture were just like those who came before them and those who came after them. All they lacked was the firepower of those who conquered them and immunity to - to them - exotic diseases, otherwise the world would look different from what it looks like today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs [2] https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/the-rise-of-the-aztec-civilization/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/the... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador