>>17981353
it's an anomaly, it's why it's so maddening to study the region

There's things I just like about those guys. I think the elaborate larp rituals of the aztec are just awesome. People don't realize this, but the biggest showey tenochtitlan sacrifices were the culmination of super elaborate ritual larp theatrics, like, you'd have some guy impersonate the God tezcatlipoca for an entire year, he'd larp 24/7 as that God, fucking with people and playing the flute, and got sacrificed after a year of this role-play. And you probably had like two dozen of these impersonators living around your city. It reminds me of Borges "babylon lottery" short story, you just don't get that kind of thing in the old world. I feel like we're missing it in today's society.

you get the sense that this was a culture that admired mastering complexity above all things, and it was probably something inculcated in them at the dawn of their civilization.
>you'd have all these amazing super-elaborate rituals going year round.
>they had all these different literary traditions existing at the same time in the same region, instead of one just taking over like you would expect.
>everyone gets combinatorial names based on numbers and weird day-names.
The entire reality moved like clockwork in mesoamerica, and the real "master of mesoamerica" was who could keep the most plates spinning while they were in charge, not just keeping a stranglehold on the region, but living up to the presentation *jazz hands* standards their whole theory of reality had always demanded of them. The mexica prided themselves on being able to show up in a new region and integrate the traditions of that region into their stack of spinning plates.