Europe never had the massive executions and sacrifices that happened in South America.
What happened in South America was on a much different scale.
“Many reputable scholars today put the number between 20,000 and 250,000 per year for the whole Aztec Empire.”
https://www.historyonthenet.com/aztec-culture-how-many-were-killed-as-human-sacrifices/
I suppose we would want to open our borders to the descendants, after all the USA is becoming heavily populated.We may need a population adjustment.
Yes, they had a lot. They also had very efficient agriculture and lots and lots of people (there have recently been some lidar studies of Mayan areas that suggest an actual population density easily 10 times what has been previously suggested). They also seem to have frequently used human sacrifice as a way to control rival population numbers.
Some years ago I pondered the outline of an alternate history text. In it Columbus does not return to Europe and as a consequence the arrival of Europeans is delayed several decades.
The real impact is with the Aztecs you mentioned, as it seems they had a prophesy that just happened to coincide with the arrival of Spaniards as well as certain signs in the sky. Now assuming the same prophetic background what would the elites do if no one had show up as predicted? You can bet your bottom dollar they wouldn’t say “well, we were wrong” but would double down claiming they had won their gods’ approval. So in the book when people from north western Europe finally do show up the Aztecs have forged an alliance that has expanded north and south, obliterating coastal peoples all the way to where they have new outposts near our NOLA and administrative centers near our Houston.
The Mississippian people, under the influence of the Little Ice age and less efficient agriculture would be reeling, and they and Eastern tribes would eagerly receive any potential allies to fight a war against the murderous southern empire.
The Europeans would see the foe in terms similar to those real worl Europeans did, only a lot more powerful and not as ideologically fragile because of some prophesy.
Of course you’d have plagues etc and not just wars.
“re your
“Europe never had the massive executions and sacrifices that happened in South America.”
One would tend to disagree with that apparently unsupported assumption. Read Caesar`s and Roman histories wherein they wiped out entire Gaulic and Germanic tribes, men, women and children by the hundreds of thousands, executions & massacres.