>Believed in a mythology where the gods gave up their literal body parts and limbs from feet to arms and intestines to organs to keep the universe running.
>Believe the world is made of dead bodies and body parts strewn up together, made from beings like Tlaltecuhtli (Earth Monster) and Cipactli.
>The national instrument is a whistle used in rituals that makes blood-curdling screams
>Had racks and pillars with nothing but skulls of sacrificed victims. The death toll nearing 20,000 sacrifices a year across the empire.
>Believed in an afterlife where most people will suffer the most excruciating pains imaginable where they have to travel through ash wastelands, unimaginable coldness/skin-shattering ice, trekking through rivers and seas of blood filled with jaguars made of blood, and once they reach the layer of the death god and peer into his death stare they will cease to exist.
>On top of human sacrifice which required ripping the heart out of a live victim, they engaged in ritual cannibalism for Xochiquétzal, flaying people alive and wearing their skin for Xipe Totec, throwing people into caves and sealing them within to make them die of starvation for the god Tezcatlipoca, and torturing infants/babies while collecting their tears and disposing of them afterward by throwing them alive into a bonfire for Tlaloc.
>It was customary for people of the empire to partake in some form of ritual sacrifice through bloodletting, which required piercing their tongues or genitals with cactus needles.
>Most punishments ended up with perpetrators being bludgeoned to death slowly (drinking pulque while on military duty).
>When Hernan Cortez reached the Temple Mayor where most sacrifices were held, he said the ENTIRE plaza was covered in blood from dried to new.
>People lived within houses where they buried dead family members and ancestors in their floors and walls
What the absolute fuck creates a society like this? What circumstances compel a people to become this death-obsessed?