After the collapse of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs moved into the political power vacuum and established a culture with a strong military ethic and a cult of human sacrifice and war. Toltec influence spread over much of central Mexico. The legend of Topiltzin/Quetzalcoatl, which claimed that a Toltec faction would one day return and claim the throne, was well known to the Aztecs (successors to the Toltecs) and may have influenced their response when the Europeans arrived.

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The Aztecs gained control of the important Lake Texcoco region in the post-Toltec era, and made their capital at Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs had a reputation as tough warriors and fanatical followers of their gods. By the time of Moctezuma II, the Aztec state was dominated by a king who represented civil power and served as a representative of the gods on earth. The cult of human sacrifice and conquest was united with the political power of the ruler and their nobility.

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Aztec religion, which incorporated many traditional Mesoamerican elements, was a vast, uniting, and sometimes oppressive force in which little distinction was made between the world of the gods and the natural world. Major deities included Tlaloc, a god of rain, and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec tribal god. Nezhualcoyotl, an Aztec king and poet, promote a kind of monotheism, but the idea did not last. Human sacrifice increased considerably. 

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To feed their people, the Aztecs used an ingenious and successful system of irrigated agriculture highlighted by Chinampas (beds of aquatic weeds, mud, and earth that had been placed in frames made of cane and rooted to the lake floor). A special merchant class, the pochteca, regulated markets, and the state oversaw a vast tribute network. 

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With a genius for state organization and bureaucratic control over peoples of different cultures and languages, the Inca achieved a level of integration and domination previously unknown in the Americas. The coastal empire of Chimor preceded the Incas. With the help of their leader, Pachacuti, and his successor, Ywantinsuyu (the Inca Empire) spread from modern-day Columbia to northern Argentina.

 

The Inca adopted the practice of royal split inheritance which required new land and wealth. This may have caused the empire's growth. The Temple of the Sun at Cuzco was the center of Incan religious life. The Incas developed a state bureaucracy, headed by an inca and four regional governors (who, in turn, divided their realms). They spread their language Quechua, used colonists, and built extensive road networks (dotted with tambos, or way stations) to encourage unity. The empire also demanded mita, mandatory labor on church and state lands.

 

The Andean people practiced parallel descent. In addition to local ayllus (clans), and class of yanas (people living outside their ayllu) provided important service. Though the empire was a masterpiece of statecraft, a system of royal multiple marriages as a way of forging alliances created rival claimants for power and the possibility of civil war on the eve of Spanish invasion. Incan cultural achievements included beautiful pottery, art, and metalworking, the quipu (a system of knotted strings for recording numerical information), land and water management, extensive road system, statecraft, and architecture.

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The Incan and Aztec empires are best viewed as variations of similar patterns and processes, of which sedentary agriculture is the most important, Basic similarities underlying the variations can also be seen in systems of belief and cosmology and in social structure.

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