Woo! Ha! Intro So the Aztecs weren't the first impressive polity in Mesoamerica, that honor would go to the Olmecs or the Mayans, but they were probably the greatest. The Aztecs formed out of an alliance of three major cities in modern day Mexico in about 1430, just 89 years before Cortes and his conquistadors showed up. The Aztec state was very hierarchical, with an emperor at the top and a group of unruly nobles beneath him, just like Europe. And in addition, there was a class of powerful priests whose job it was to keep order in the cosmos. So Aztec religion held that history was cyclical and punctuated by terrible disasters and then would ultimately end with a massive apocalypse.